the Classicist President - Classical Studies

On September 20, 1863, the lastday of the Battle of Chickamau-ga, a thirty-one-year-old

brigadier general from Ohio – already aclassics professor, college president, andnewly elected to the U. S. Congress –left the retreat of Union General WilliamS. Rosecrans, whom he served as mili-tary chief of staff, and rode under heavyfire to the side of General George H.Thomas, still standing his ground againstthe Confederate troops on another front.The professor’s detailed battle reports toThomas strengthened Thomas’ resolveto fight on and helped save the UnionArmy of the Cumberland. In time, theprofessor’s action that day helped takehim all the way to the White House.

James Abram Garfield, the only pro-fessional classicist ever to serve as Presi-dent of the United States, was born in alog cabin in northern Ohio on Novem-ber 19, 1831. The fourth and youngestchild of a near-destitute widow, Garfieldwas nevertheless encouraged by hismother to seek an education. First atnearby Geauga Academy, then at theHiram Eclectic Institute – later HiramCollege – Garfield’s education centeredon Latin, Greek, and mathematics.

Garfield began keeping detaileddiaries after he entered Geauga Acade-my on March 6, 1849, and continuedthis habit for the rest of his life. Thesediaries have been published, along withmuch of his extensive correspondence.Together they preserve substantial evi-dence of Garfield’s lifelong love affairwith learning and especially with Latin.As early as April 15, 1850, he wrote inhis diary in Latin that he loved books,“Amo Libros.” A month later he added,“Love Latin.”

After a brief stint of school teaching,Garfield, in the fall of 1851 at age nine-teen, entered the newly establishedWestern Reserve Eclectic Institute inHiram, Ohio. Here he continued to flour-ish. He became greatly popular andexcelled in all his studies. In time,

Garfield had little more to learn from theresources of Hiram and began to teachthere.

James had known Lucretia Rudolph,whom he eventually married, since bothwere students Geauga Academy. Theybecame better acquainted as they bothstudied at the Eclectic Institute.Garfield now discovered one of themore practical benefits of studyingGreek and Latin – its use as a means ofcourtship. In an early exchange of let-ters about their classical studies,Garfield wrote: “Today, the Virgil classfinished the third book and are goingabout 50 lines per day. Are you ahead?

Book Review: The Penelopiadby Matthew Clark

Margaret Atwood. The Penelopiad: TheMyth of Penelope and Odysseus. Alfred A.Knopf, Canada (http://www.random-house.ca), 2005. Pp. xv, 199. Hardcover$17.95. ISBN 0-676-97418-X.

Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad:The Myth of Penelope and Odysseus

is one volume in a series of retellings ofmyths from around the world by variousmodern authors. Thirty-one publishers areparticipating in the project; other writerscontracted to produce versions includeChinua Achebe, Donna Tartt, and A. S.Byatt; Karen Armstrong has written a gen-eral account of myth (A Short History ofMyth, 2005) to accompany the series as awhole. The project overall has the appear-ance of a commercial enterprise, but thetest of its value, of course, will lie in thequality of the individual volumes.

Atwood tells her story from two points ofview: the principal narrator is Penelopeherself, now dead and resident in the after-world, but Penelope’s narrative is interrupt-ed by a number of chapters from the pointof view of the maids killed in Book 22 ofthe Odyssey. Most of these interruptionsare songs or poems or prose poems,though there is also an “anthropology

the Classicist Presidentby Susan Ford Wiltshire

Novel Approaches to the classics:Part III .....................................................................3

Whatever happened in thessaly?A postmodern fantasy.............................6

Did You Know…...............................................8

The Plague of Athens: CurrentAnalytic Techniques...............................10

Coming in Future Issues ........................12

Book Review: “The Songs of theKings” ....................................................................13

Ask A Classicist...............................................15

From Scroll to Database:What do classics librarians do?..16

From the Editor..........................................18

The Ohio Wesleyan “Virgil Vigil”...19

Guidelines for contributors........20

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Fig. 1. James A. Garfield, major generalin the Union Army during the Civil War,1862.

I presume so. Won’t you come in toboth Greek and Latin in the spring? Wemiss you very much in these two class-es. What are your views now with regardto studying the classics? Have you rec-onciled yourself to devoting a few moreyears to them? I would like to hear yourreasonings on the subject. I would muchrather converse ‘ore quam calamo’ [inperson, not by pen] but it seems ourleisure hours do not synchronize . . .”

After two years and hungry for moreintellectual stimulus than Hiram andOhio could provide, Garfield wrote thepresidents of Yale, Brown, and WilliamsCollege about the possibility of enteringas a transfer student. Mark Hopkins, thelegendary president of Williams College,responded most favorably, so in thesummer of 1854, leaving behind Lucre-tia, to whom he had become informallyengaged, Garfield arrived in Williams-town, Massachusetts. He wrote toLucretia that within three hours of hisarrival he was being examined by Hop-kins in Homer, Xenophon’s Memorabilia,Livy, and Horace. In a later letter toLucretia he wrote of the importance tohim of this kind of education. His letteralso sheds light on his powerful ambi-tion, what he calls his “inner fires”:

I do not feel satisfied merely to carryaway the skin of a Massachusettssheep, but I want to know somethingof the men, the thoughts, that are here. Ifeel the necessity of breaking throughthe shell of local notions and gettingmentally free. I mean no disrespect forthe influences and teaching that I hadhad, but I mean to say that to mouldone’s mind in one place and underone system of things must necessarilygive it one particular channel, and notthat breadth of field that is desirable. . . . There are some splendid scholarsin the class. Many come from Harvard,Amherst, and Yale to finish here.Lucretia, I must admit that thoseinner fires come surging up throughevery nerve and fiber of my being instrong desire and strong determinationnot to stand – at least, last of all. . . .Honor is not the object for which I labor;but when in a class I am miserable iffar behind.

Upon graduation in August 1856 withhonors from Williams, where he hadalso become a star debater and speaker,Garfield returned to Hiram as professorof ancient languages and, soon there-after, as president of the school. He hadfallen in love with another young

woman in Massachusetts, but feeling asense of duty to Lucretia, he proposedto her in April 1858, and they married inNovember of that year. Garfield’s rest-less energy took him away from homefrequently in the early years of the mar-riage, absences that were hard on Lucre-tia who, in time, would be primarilyresponsible for raising their seven chil-dren. Lucretia, however, was also ascholar, and to the end of her life in1918, she set aside time every day forreading and writing.

While at Hiram, Garfield was sent tothe Ohio State legislature in 1859. Duringthis time, he also campaigned tirelessly forAbraham Lincoln, who easily wonGarfield’s district in 1860. In August 1861,he joined the 42nd Ohio VolunteerInfantry as a lieutenant colonel. He foughtsuccessfully in the battle of Middle Creekin Kentucky in January of 1862 (see Fig.1). He was promoted to brigadier general,and in the fall of that same year, was elect-ed to the U. S. Congress as a strong sup-porter of abolition. In December 1863, atthe urging of President Lincoln, Garfieldresigned his military commission and tookhis seat in Congress.

The move to Washington and topolitical life did not dim Garfield’sattraction to the classics. From Congresshe wrote to his good friend Burke Hins-dale on January 1, 1867: “My love forLatin and Greek, and the history ofantiquity, is growing every day. I havestolen many hours since I have beenhere and given them to Cicero andHorace. I am also trying to study French– but I presume I shall be cut shortwhen Congress gets to work.”

Garfield’s diary entry of January 5,1872, describes a typical day: “Still writ-ing letters and working off accumulatedDepartment business. Criticised addi-tional chapter of Hinsdale’s forthcomingbook, on the genuineness and authen-ticity of the Gospels. Answered Prof.Demmon’s inquiry on the meaning of“Monstra Natantia” in the third of thefirst book of Horace’s Odes. The Profes-sor thought the words meant ships. I sayit means animals; marine monsters.”

In other diary entries from the con-gressional years, Garfield describes puz-zling over the structure of Horace’s OdeI.4 to Sestius; helping his sons withtheir Caesar; reading to them Momm-sen’s account of the Servile War orPlutarch’s History of Romulus; slippingover to the Library of Congress betweendebates to spend an hour among the

Latin classics; reading Cicero’s letters,Livy, Ovid, and Plutarch; and readingEuripides and Sophocles. He was fasci-nated with Pliny the Younger, whom hefound unjustly neglected, and heexpressed his desire to translate Pliny’sletters. He writes of his determinationto collect a complete set of the Latinclassics and of turning to Lucretius forrest when he was too weary to sleep.

On October 27, 1873, Garfield wrote:“I have come to dread these continualchanges of home, from Washington toHiram. Middle life, and especiallyscholarly life, needs regular habits . . . . I fear also that these constant changesmay unfit me for steady continuous lifein one place – which feeling of unrestwould ill become an old man. This isprobably the first time I have used thewords ‘old man’ as applied to myself inthe near future. But if I live ten yearslonger I shall be in the near neighbor-hood of old age. I must resume my read-ing of De Senectute [On Old Age].”

At that writing, Garfield was forty-one years old. Seven years later in 1880,after eight consecutive terms in Con-gress, Garfield won a race for the U. S. Senate. Then at the RepublicanParty’s convention in Chicago in June,he became the successful compromisecandidate for President on the thirty-sixth ballot after the convention becamedeadlocked between Ulysses S. Grantand James G. Blaine.

Garfield won the presidency againstDemocratic candidate General WinfieldScott Hancock and was inaugurated onMarch 4, 1881 (see Fig. 2). After servingin office only four months, PresidentGarfield was boarding a train at UnionStation on July 2 on his way to Williams-town for a meeting of the Williams Col-lege Board of Trustees. There Charles

the Classicist Presidentcontinued from page 1

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Fig. 2. James A. Garfield, twentiethpresident of the United States, 1881.

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Gateau, an unbalanced partisan of theStalwarts, the rival Republican faction,gunned him down. Garfield lay ill forseventy-nine days, conscious most ofthe time, and finally died on September19, 1881. He was forty-nine years old,two months shy of his fiftieth birthday.

In 1882, on the first anniversary ofGarfield’s death, the Williams Board ofTrustees established the Garfield Chairof Ancient Languages (currently heldby Professor Kerry A. Christensen). Onthe same occasion, Mark Hopkins, for-mer president and still a professor atWilliams, delivered a “Memorial Dis-course” to the Trustees about Garfield,which is contained in Hopkins’ Teach-ings and Counsels (1884). Hopkins spokeof Garfield’s humble beginnings, hisintellect and versatility, his way of win-ning the confidence of people. But whatinterested Hopkins most was Garfield’scombination of intellectual thirst andpolitical acumen:

But as President Garfield had, fromhis early struggles, in common withPresident Lincoln, a ground for thesympathy of the masses, so had he,from his broad scholarship and variedattainments, in common with JohnQuincy Adams, a ground for sympathywith persons of the highest culture. Itwas a common remark . . . that noPresident except John Quincy Adamshad been equally equipped in scholar-ship and statesmanship.

Garfield was a romantic in the nine-teenth-century sense – a lover of litera-ture, adventure, politics, people, andlife in general. He flourished in the edu-cational, social, military, and politicalworlds. He was thorough and charmingand charismatic. In him, the heart andmind were married, and it was his loveof the classics throughout his life thatfuelled them both.

Susan Ford Wiltshire ([email protected]) is Professor of Classicsat Vanderbilt University. She has writtenextensively on the classical tradition in Ameri-ca, including a book Greece, Rome, and theBill of Rights (1992). Her most recent book isa poetry collection, Windmills and Bridges:Poems Near and Far (2002). Many yearsago, Professor Leo M. Kaiser of Loyola Uni-versity in Chicago, a pioneer scholar of the clas-sical tradition in America, sent her his extensivecollection of research materials on Garfield andthe classics with the hope that she might com-plete his project. She dedicates this article as anact of pietas to his memory.

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NOVEL APPROACHES TO THECLASSICS: PART IIIby Thomas Falkner

T he Human Stain may not be PhilipRoth’s finest novel, but its protag-onist, Coleman Silk, is surely

among his most exceptional: a fictionalcharacter who, through a secondaryprocess of characterization, makes hisown life a fiction. By birth, ColemanSilk is a light-skinned African Americanraised in East Orange, New Jersey. Butas a graduate student in Greenwich Vil-lage in the early 50’s, he exchanges hisBlack identity for a Jewish one, disown-ing race and family in the bargain. Helives the rest of his life successfully – ifthat is the right word – “passing” as awhite Jewish classics professor andadministrator at “Athena College” inthe Berkshires.

The Human Stain isa powerful medita-tion on identity andhybridity and theparadoxes of race inAmerica. Silk’s self-fabrication is enabledby America’s violentracial history – ofslaveowners, sexualdomination, and pig-mentation in greaterand lesser amounts.The Silk family was so fair-skinned that,despite the general Negrophobia of EastOrange, “. . . the neighbors were on thewhole friendly with the ultra-respectablelight-skinned Silks – Negroes, to be sure,but, in the words of one tolerant motherof a kindergarten playmate of Cole-man’s, ‘people of a very pleasing shade,rather like eggnog’” (122-23).

Fairness of skin is the genetic legacyof America’s racial past, its human stainand corporeal sign, as novelists fromWilliam Faulkner on have described sowell. In The Human Stain, racial hybridi-ty allows a social and cultural mobilitythat both liberates and estranges, thatenables one to choose from two identi-ties and to have no identity at all. Atfirst, Silk participates in this conditiontentatively and even playfully. In highschool, he practices at being Jewish onthe advice of his boxing trainer, DocChizner. As the two drive to a match atWest Point, Doc advises him not tomention that he is colored, to let peoplethink that he is Jewish. Doc’s principle– let others sort you out on the basis of

what they think they know – works sowell that Roth’s narrator, theredoubtable Nathan Zuckerman, istaken in. He introduces Silk as “a neat,attractive package of a man even at hisage, the small-nosed Jewish type withthe facial heft in the jaw, one of thosecrimped-haired Jews of a light yellowishskin pigmentation who possess some-thing of the ambiguous aura of theblacks who are sometimes taken forwhite” (15-16).

Silk’s forays across the color linebecome bolder. After dropping out ofHoward University, he enlists in thenavy, and he realizes that he can playhis skin color however he wants. His

experiment as awhite midshipman isa qualified success.He passes undetect-ed, apart from ahumiliating night ina white Virginiawhorehouse, the dis-grace of which hememorialized in atiny blue tattoo thathe came to regard as“the emblem of whatcannot ever be

removed.” Later, after the war, after los-ing a white girlfriend and taking up witha secular Jew, amidst the multi-ethnicand multi-racial license of New York, hemakes the change permanent.

Silk’s biography becomes a blend offact and fiction. He truly had graduatedvaledictorian from East Orange H.S. in1944: “back in those days, studying myhigh school Latin, taking advancedLatin, taking Greek, which was still partof the old-fashioned curriculum” (22).He enrolled at NYU, completing a B.A.and then a Ph.D. in classics. A firstappointment at Adelphi University isfollowed by the position at Athena.Curiously, the narrator suggests that“Coleman was . . . perhaps among thefirst of the Jews permitted to teach in aclassics department anywhere in Ameri-ca” (5). Whatever the situation atAthena, the history here is skewed, andin Refugee Scholars in America (1984)Lewis Coser has documented the influxof classical scholars who came to Ameri-ca from Germany in the 1930’s and whostruggled with the anti-Semitism that

At the core of Silk’sFaustian wager is the

quintessential Americanmyth, the individualist who finds in America the freedom to slough

his past.


lecture” by the maids and the transcript ofa mock trial of Odysseus. This doubled nar-rative structure nicely matches the two ques-tions Atwood poses in her introduction (xv):What was Penelope really up to, and whatled to the hanging of the maids at the endof the story?

Penelope herself is at the center of thestory. Atwood, unlike Homer, presents herwhole life, from birth to life after death.Penelope’s troubles start with her family.Her mother, a Naiad, is cold and distant.Her father tries to drown her, and whenthat does not work, he becomes “if any-thing, rather too affectionate” (10). Pene-lope’s troubles continue with her cousinHelen. Atwood’s Helen is rather unpleas-ant, with none of the anguish and introspec-tion of Helen in the Iliad and none of thewit and charm of Helen in the Odyssey.She is vain and selfish, and she continuallytaunts Penelope, who in Atwood’s version,is plain and a bit dull, if clever. WhenOdysseus rather surprisingly wins Penelopefor his bride, things begin to look up a little.In Ithaca she is lonely at first and without afriend, but gradually she makes a kind oflife for herself.

The great crisis of her life comes whenOdysseus goes off to war and she has totake over the management of the estate andthe kingdom. She rises to the challenge,and in a way, this period is the happiest inthe story. Only at this point does Atwood’sversion begin to parallel the Odyssey.Once the war is over, Penelope waits forthe return of Odysseus, and waits, andwaits. Travelers bring stories of his adven-tures, but Penelope always suggests a revi-sionist account. “Odysseus had been in afight with a giant one-eyed Cyclops, saidsome; no, it was only a one-eyed tavern-keeper, said another, and the fight wasover non-payment of the bill . . . . Odysseuswas the guest of a goddess on an enchant-ed isle, said some . . . ; no, said others, itwas just an expensive whorehouse, and hewas sponging off the Madam” (83-84).When Odysseus finally does return, in dis-guise, Penelope recognizes him instantly,but she keeps quiet so as not to burst thebubble of his self-esteem as a trickster –

and also to protect her own reputation as afaithful and cautious wife. Scholars contin-ue to argue about what Homer’s Penelopeknew or guessed. I suspect that part of themagic of Homer’s version lies in its ambigu-ity. Atwood certainly has an author’s rightto tell the story her own way. The questionis not if her version is right or wrong but if itis convincing and alive.

After Odysseus’ return and recognition,Atwood poses her second question. “I’vealways been haunted by the hangedmaids,” she says (xv). Indeed, they pose aserious moral problem for readers today (asdo, for example, the Trojans sacrificed toPatroclus in the Iliad). According to Homer,Odysseus orders the maids killed becausethey were disloyal: they were sleeping withthe suitors – or so said the old servantwoman Eurycleia. Atwood suggests someother possibilities. First, granting Homer’sversion, we could simply dismiss the maidsas victims of another time, another culture,another moral system. Atwood notes thispossibility in one of the maids’ chapters,but really only to dismiss it.

Penelope offers another explanation: sheherself had encouraged the maids to con-sort with the suitors so they could gatherinformation for her; unfortunately, she hadneglected to let Eurycleia in on the scheme,so Odysseus kills the maids out of igno-rance. Or else, Penelope suggests,Eurycleia actually knew that the maids werespying for Penelope and let them hang outof resentment. The maids claim that Pene-lope let them be killed so they would notreveal her sexual escapades with the suit-ors. Or else, as the maids suggest in theiranthropology lecture, their rape and hang-

ing “represent the overthrow of a matrilin-eal moon-cult by an incoming group ofusurping patriarchal father-god-worshipingbarbarians” (165). I am not sure where allthis leaves us; because of the abundance ofpossibilities, none is explored in any depth.

Revisions and revisionings of myth beginas early as Homer; the twentieth centuryhas seen a number of notable versions ofthe story of Odysseus. There is no singleright way to retell a myth. The familiarevents can be retold, but from a new pointof view; new events can be imagined; orthe story may be mined for new truths.When a story is retold, it must answer – orat least pose – the questions of its owntime. It also should live as a story on itsown. The story of Penelope deserves to betold, as much as the story of Odysseus; it iscertainly a story for our time. The maidsalso deserve a hearing. I am not, however,satisfied that Atwood has really given usPenelope. Because the slim volume tellsPenelope’s whole story, from birth to herlife after death, no moment is explored inmuch depth. Atwood tells us the story, butshe does not reveal much about the charac-ters. Moreover, Atwood seems at pains todisplay all her research – mostly derivedfrom Robert Graves’ eccentric compendium,The Greek Myths (1955). But the detailsand variants, as fascinating as they are, lieon the surface, undigested.

Several of my students have readAtwood’s Penelopiad – some liked it, somedid not. But it has provided an opportunityfor lively debate on a number of topics.This revisionist version could easily find aplace in courses on Greek myth or the epictradition.

Matthew Clark ([email protected]) isan associate professor at York University.He is the author of Out of Line: HomericComposition Beyond the Hexameter (1997)and A Matter of Style: Writing andTechnique (2003).

Book Review: The Penelopiadcontinued from page 1

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When a story is retold, it must answer – or at

least pose – the questions of its own time.


had characterized the discipline to thatpoint. Silk’s newly invented past is amodel of verisimilitude. His grandpar-ents become immigrants from “some-where in Russia,” the family namechanged from Silberzweig to Silk, theancestors lost in the diasporic melee.His late father was a saloon keeper witha fanatical respect for the English lan-guage who pushed him to be a seriousstudent.

At the core of Silk’s Faustian wager isthe quintessential American myth, theindividualist who finds in America thefreedom to slough his past and by dintof native talent slides into a new life andidentity. But for Silk that freedom is aresidual by-product of the racial oppres-sion that provides the requisite physicalcapital, and the project of the self-mademan is doomed to failure.

This hybridity has its counterpart inthe novel’s profound relationship to theclassics. Roth announces his textualstrategy, offering Oedipus the King 99-101as the book’s epigraph:

OEDIPUS: What is the rite ofpurification? How shall it be done?

CREON: By banishing a man, orexpiation of blood by blood . . .

Greek tragedy is the primary intertextfor The Human Stain, and Coleman Silkis introduced in full tragic potential, ashe lectures on the Iliad and the quarrelof Agamemnon and Achilles. Silk’sestrangement from the social world, likethat of Achilles, involves a woman and aquarrel with institutional authority. Itbegins with his innocent but revealinguse of the word “spooks” in a classroom,which the administration denounces asa racial slur. After his resignation fromAthena over this incident, his affair withthe young and illiterate Faunia Farleyand the outrage it provokes completethe process of his withdrawal from thecommunity.

But Achilles provides only oneparadigm:

[Silk] knew what can corrode andwarp a man who believes himself tohave been grievously wronged. Heknew from the wrath of Achilles, therage of Philoctetes, the fulminationsof Medea, the madness of Ajax, thedespair of Electra, and the suffering ofPrometheus the many horrors that canensue when the degree of indignation

is achieved and, in the name of jus-tice, retribution is exacted and a cycleof retaliation begins. (63)

These texts have the force of prophe-cies received but ignored, and their res-onances provide a silent choral wisdomthat the protagonist chooses not toheed.

Silk’s capacity for outrage and hisdetermination to confront the indigni-ties he suffers qualify him as a Sopho-clean hero, and the Oedipus plays pro-vide a rich set of analogues. (On theconnection between Silk and Oedipus,see also Geoffrey Bakewell, “PhilipRoth’s Oedipal Stain,” Classical andModern Literature, 2002, 29-46.) Silk’sname Coleman (“Coal-Man”), likeOedipus’ name (“Swollen Foot”), pro-vides a physiognomic clue as to his trueidentity. The Jocasta figure here is splitin two. Iris Silk, whose death is indirect-ly caused by Coleman’s paroxysms ofrage, is, like Jocasta, unaware of her hus-band’s secret past, and they too havefour children who carry his secret withinthemselves unawares. Silk’s affair withFaunia Farley, though not incestuous, isscandalous and fraught with tragicpotential. A victim of violence andabuse, true to her sylvan name she com-munes better with cows and birds thanhumans, and her dark nature gives thisdeeply sexual relationship forbiddenovertones.

Most of all, it is Silk’s secret past thatlikens him to Oedipus, and the darkmysteries of race provide an Americancorollary to the Greek horror of incest.Silk comes by his own design to a cross-roads of race and identity, cutting irrev-ocably the ties to his true father andmother and family. The anagnorisis(recognition) in the novel will be Zuck-erman’s, who will come to discoverSilk’s secret only after his death, thoughZuckerman’s narrative enables the read-er, like the audience of Oedipus the King,to “know the story” almost from theoutset. This knowledge allows us toappreciate the story’s fully ironic struc-ture: that a black man should be con-victed of racism by a white community;that a once second-rate college shouldturn against the dean who had made itrespectable; that a man seeking toescape racism by passing as a Jewshould encounter anti-Semitism and dieat the hands of the Jew-hating LesterFarley; that Silk himself, armed by “the

prophylaxis of the whole of Attictragedy and Greek epic poetry” (63),should fail to see the tragic trajectory ofhis life. Even the glee with which Silkcelebrated his new identity has a paral-lel in Oedipus’ declaration of himself a“child of fortune.”

The theme of banishment that isdeclared in the novel’s epigraph con-nects with both of the Oedipus plays.The connection with Oedipus the King isto the collective guilt and pollution thatdevolves from his secret origins and tothe thematics of exposure and its conse-quences. Silk’s banishment from thefamily and the community connect thenovel with Oedipus at Colonus, a play inwhich the ritual of social expulsion isshown to be in truth an exercise inhypocrisy. This theme is amplified bysetting Silk’s story against the back-ground of the Clinton impeachment, asAmerica indulges in “the ecstasy ofsanctimony . . . eager to enact the astrin-gent rituals of purification” (2). LikeOedipus, Coleman Silk finds in theterms of his ostracism the grounds onwhich he liberates himself anew fromthe smugness and political correctnessof Athena College: the college becomesan academic Thebes, its faculty narrow-minded and ritualistic in their rejectionof their former leader. Silk’s dismissal,like the expulsion of Oedipus, becomesan angry self-exile, his isolation a deter-mination to live his remaining years onhis own terms.

Silk bitterly rejects the hypocrisy offamily and community that disguisesself-interest as principle. Like the agedOedipus, Silk finds his own family capa-ble of betrayal, and he is outraged tofind that his children have joined in thegeneral disapproval of his relationshipwith Faunia. Yet here too among thefour children there is a spectrum offidelity and betrayal; his love for his ide-alistic daughter Lisa and his strainedrelationship with his son Mark recallAntigone and Polyneices, respectively.

All of this notwithstanding, TheHuman Stain remains a novel, not atragedy. The general incompatibilitybetween tragedy and the modern novelhas been well examined; in his recentwork Sweet Violence: The Idea of the Tragic(2003), Terry Eagleton has questionedthe critical traditions that position thetwo genres as polar opposites and thenovel as inherently anti-tragic. To besure, Roth’s purposes are far from thoseof great tragic novelists of the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries or theirtwentieth-century successors. Yet

NOVEL APPROACHES TO THE CLASSICS: PART IIIcontinued from page 3

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Prologue

“Alcestis’ tomb could have beensomewhere not far from here,”I pointed out. “Euripides’ cho-

rus tells Heracles that he will find it justoutside their city of Pherae, by the roadleading to Larissa.” We were sitting onthe grass by the river – Stella, a univer-sity student, her aunt Clio, retired fromteaching at an American school inAthens, and I. It was in the spring of1948. The latest Greek civil war wasalready going on then, but it was astrange war to live with. Terrible thingswere happening in the mountains, butin Athens life was pleasantly routine forus, as it was in most of the heavily popu-lated areas in Greece, which was steadi-ly recovering from the Nazi occupation.Nobody had opposed my accepting myfriend Stella’s invitation to spend Easterweek at her home in Larissa. Nor didher family object to our plans to go for apicnic lunch in the countryside nearLarissa, which was at that date only asmall town. Everything was so peacefuland unspoiled that I was already yield-ing to my familiar temptation – to imag-ine that I was in a setting no differentfrom what ancient Greece had offered –when the feeling was reinforced by achorus of frogs croaking exactly asAristophanes had imitated them in hiscomedy: “Brekekekex, koáx, koáx,brekekekex, koáx.” Finally they sub-sided, and my thoughts returned toEuripides’ Alcestis.

“The play leaves too much unfin-ished,” I complained. “I want to knowwhat happened when these two finallyconfronted each other after the threedays of imposed silence. The workabsolutely demands a sequel. If only theplaywright had made this the first of atrilogy of dramas instead of placing itfourth as a substitute for the traditionalsatyr play! He has shown Admetusawakening to a fuller realization of justwhat he had done and promising tomake a better future for the two ofthem. But how much had he reallychanged? And Alcestis – surely herreopened eyes would not have looked atthe world and Admetus exactly asbefore. Just try to imagine the complex-ities this master of psychologicalnuances could have explored! I wonderwhether the final resolution would have

been reconciliation or bitter tragedy.” “Euripides wasn’t Aeschylus,” Stella

reminded me. “And he never made upstories without some support in existingmyth. Besides, there was only one end-ing possible. The plot of Admetus andAlcestis was that of a fairytale and couldhave only the happy ending requisitefor all fairytales. As the third day comesto a close, the two fall into each other’sarms, proclaiming their joy at theirreunion, declaring they will never beseparated again. Admetus swears that hewill love and honor her more than evernow that he has seen her true worth,surpassing his own, he admits frankly.She tells him that she would gladly do itall over again rather than to live withouthim. So they lived happily ever afteruntil they were very old, and they diedpainlessly at the same hour of the sameday.”

I responded with horror. “Euripideswould never have settled for that! Idon’t presume to guess what he wouldhave done. But I prefer to imagine ascene halfway between Medea’s denun-ciation of Jason and Ibsen’s Nora sayinggoodbye to Torwald. Alcestis would cutAdmetus’ protestations short and insistthat, if she is to stay with him, he mustagree that they will together and asequals rule over the household and overPherae as co-sovereigns.”

“A born again feminist!” jeered Stella. And Clio said, “If she had tried any-

thing like that, Admetus would havesent posthaste for Heracles and beggedhim to take her back to the tomb, bury-ing her alive if necessary.”

“I admit to the anachronism,” I con-fessed, “but I insist that there musthave been some radical change for bothof them. If all went on as before, thenher death and resurrection were fornothing.”

Stella took up the challenge. “Wellthen, if we are really going to let ourimaginations run, we can begin withthat supposed death. What happenedduring the time that Alcestis’ body layin the sepulcher? Did she lie inert, wait-ing for Death to take her? Or did hershade actually go down to Hades? Couldshe have, as Socrates hoped would bethe case, met and talked with the greatones of the past? Socrates could haveheld his own with them, but I cannotimagine Alcestis – or myself – doing so.

But maybe she had some sort of inde-scribable experience that transformedher. If so, then perhaps instead ofreproaching Admetus, she merelylooked at him compassionately and heldherself aloof. I can envision her goingoften to the temple, possibly becominga priestess. Or else she joined the fol-lowers of Orpheus (were they aroundthen?) and spent the rest of her lifepreparing for a blissful existence afterdeath in the realms of eternal ether.”

“This is all nonsense,” snorted Clio. Stella and I turned on her. “Well,

what do you think? Did she just onceagain become the devoted wife? Do youbelieve that Admetus was worthy of thegift she gave him?”

“Admetus got what he deserved,”Clio replied. We stared at her in disbe-lief. “That is, the second time,” sheadded.

“What do you mean – the secondtime?”

Clio was silent for so long I began tothink our futile imaginings had some-how offended her. Or was she just boredwith them? At last she spoke:

“Over the centuries many Greeks,even, perhaps especially, among the lesseducated, have not always distinguishedclearly between the ancient myths ofheroes and our half-legendary history.We have clung to and nourished themall as part of our past. It’s probably onlyhalf-belief. Still, I have a friend whofinds Mycenae depressing because of allthe murders that purportedly took placethere. Or maybe it’s more like what youAmericans have done with the tale ofWashington cutting down the cherrytree or throwing the silver dollar acrossthe Potomac river. At any rate, peopleretell the stories, particularly cherishingthe ones connected with the placeswhere they live. In Thessaly, parentshave been telling their children aboutAdmetus and Alcestis for generations.But what they have passed down goesfar beyond what Euripides wrote. Idon’t know whether the longer versionwas generally known in ancient timesand preserved only by the people inThessaly since that is where it was sup-posed to have happened. More likelythe narrators let their imaginations fill inwhere they, like you, found the storyunfinished. I will tell you what Iremember my grandmother telling me,

6

WHATEVER HAPPENED IN THESSALY? A POSTMODERN FANTASYby Hazel E. Barnes


and in the way that I have often imag-ined it to myself.”

“First let me give us some moreretsina,” said Stella. She did so. Fortu-nately the frogs remained quiet.

Clio’s Tale: What Happened in Thessaly

Alcestis fell into a dreamless sleep, anight such as the great King of Persiahimself might envy. She woke whenshe felt the two obols being lifted fromher eyes. Her first thought was thatCharon was collecting his fare, but thegod who stood at her side, shedding hisown light, was not Charon. It was Her-mes, as she could tell by the wings at hisankles and the snake-entwined staff heheld. Admetus had told her that duringthe year Apollo had spent in Pherae,Admetus had learned that it was possi-ble to converse with a god so long asyou remained respectful and did not askpersonal questions, or inquire aboutmatters outside mortal experience, orexpress curiosity concerning odditiessuch as why the immortals took pleasurein the smell of burning meat. So she wasnot fearful now but rather bewilderedand asked, “Have the Fates gone backon their promise? Do they insist on hav-ing Admetus after all?”

“No,” Hermes answered. “Admetusstill lives. But when Death came to takeyou, Heracles wrestled with him andovercame him. The gods were sopleased with your willingness to die inyour husband’s place that they have letDeath stand defeated. You and Adme-tus are both reprieved.” He handed herthe two obols. “Keep them for nexttime,” he said. Hermes continued,“Before Heracles moves the tombstoneand comes in, I have something to giveyou. It is a gift from Persephone, onethat will make you yourself guardian ofyour future. Do you remember the twodrops of Gorgon blood that Creusa hadin her possession? Athena had giventhem to Creusa’s great-grandfather,Erichthonius, and they had been hand-ed down to her. One of the drops was adeadly poison, the other had the powerto heal diseases and injury. Creusa usedthe poison in her thwarted attempt tokill Ion, whom she mistakenly believedto be her husband’s bastard son. Athenalater took back the second drop andgave it to Persephone. Wisely so. Whateven Creusa did not know was that thisone did more than heal. Whoever takesthis drop will live forever, cannot die.Persephone wants you to have two

drops like those first given to Creusa.(Several drops of the Gorgon’s bloodhad been preserved when she waskilled.) Keep them hidden and usethem when you see their time has come.The vial with the poison is sealed inblack. The life-saving one bears theimage of the Gorgon.” He handed her asmall box holding two tiny vials. “Hera-cles is moving the stone. Do not sayanything to him. I have explained tohim that it is the gods’ will that you donot speak to anyone for three days.”

As sunlight flooded the tomb,Alcestis’ dazzled eyes saw a man whodwarfed the landscape. She shrank backas he came toward her and extended hishand. But he spoke gently. “Don’t beafraid. I am here to take back the best ofwomen to the best of men.”

“At least to the best of hosts,” saidHermes and disappeared.

Alcestis needed the hero’s hand asthey walked to the palace. Heracles hadinsisted that she cover herself with aveil. “Admetus has the right to see youbefore anyone else does,” he told her.Alcestis obeyed, but reluctantly. Shewould have liked to feel the sun on herface, to see clearly and exultantly every-one and everything in this world somiraculously restored to her. On theway Heracles talked incessantly. Heexplained how it had all come about:Admetus’ hospitable but deceptivereception of him as a guest, his owndrunkenness, and then his discovery ofthe true situation. He rehearsed hisdecision to redeem himself by provingthat he could achieve the impossible.“After all,” he asserted, “I had beendefying Death everyday of my man-hood. Why not at last meet him face toface?” After that he related some of hispast exploits. At times he paused as ifexpecting an expression of admirationfrom Alcestis, then recalled that she wasnot permitted to speak to him. Sheslightly pressed his hand now and thenat what he obviously thought wereexciting points, but in truth she hardly

listened to him. She was trying to fore-see how her husband and others athome would greet her return.

They found Admetus in the court-yard. Inwardly impatient, Alcestis stoodquietly by as Heracles told how he hadwon this veiled woman as a prize insome games and wanted to leave herhere while he continued on his mission.He brushed aside Admetus’ protesta-tions that it would not be fitting. Alces-tis thought, “How Heracles loves hishoax!” And she wondered if this wasthe real reason he had insisted on theveil. Was this just another of thosepranks that Admetus and his friendsliked to play on one another? Then shereflected that Heracles was telling thetruth. He had in fact won her in a con-test, and now he was handing her overto Admetus as a thank-you gift to hishost. Then Admetus was lifting the veil,and all thoughts were lost in a rush ofemotion. The mixture of joy andincredulity on his face made her start tolaugh in sheer happiness though shequickly suppressed all sound at a warn-ing gesture from Heracles. A passionatetenderness overwhelmed her to meetthe love she saw in her husband’s eyes.At that moment no words were needed.

If only it could have lasted forever!But Heracles stopped them fromembracing, saying that it was dangerousfor Admetus to have close contact withsomeone come so recently from theworld of the dead. They must wait outthe three days. Then Admetus had to gothrough the ceremony of farewell asHeracles set out again. The maids tookAlcestis inside and brought her food andwine which, after a minute of hesitation,she consumed with evident pleasure;she signed that she would like to havemore.

She had not quite finished whenAdmetus came and knelt before her. Heappeared anxious and agitated. Passion-ately, in a jumble of words, he tried toexpress to her the excess of his grief atlosing her and his unbounded gladnessat having her restored to him. Hedescribed how, in her absence, he hadtortured himself, trying to relive theprecious times they had shared. He real-ized now as never before how much ofthe happiness of his life had centeredand depended on her. But the great lovehe had had for her then paled besidewhat he felt now. He loved her, not onlyas his treasured wife, but as a womanwithout peer. What she had done forhim put her with the truly great hero-ines; she was close to a goddess. Howprivileged he was, how honored, to be


In Thessaly, parents have been telling their

children about Admetus and Alcestis for

generations.


the husband of his Alcestis returnedfrom the grave.

Gradually pride gave way to a humili-ty almost abject. Alcestis perceived toher amazement that Admetus had takenon the role of suppliant. He confessedthat he should never have let her die inhis place. He had realized this as soon ashe had returned from the burial. At firstit was the thought of how he mustappear to others that pricked him; butthen he felt shamed in his own eyes.Even his terrible grief seemed taintedas he reminded himself that he had cho-sen to live without her rather than toaccept the death fated for him. Howcould he live, forced to see himself asinferior to the wife he had loved lessthan himself? Surely, he declared to hernow, he would not have been able tobear it but would soon have chosen tojoin her in the Underworld.

Alcestis made gestures of remon-strance, but he went on and on. Now hewondered to himself and to her just howit was that he had done as he did. Heblamed the gods in part for creating thesituation. By decreeing that he need notdie if someone could be found willing totake his place, they appeared to givetheir approval to the idea that he shouldsave himself by searching for such a per-son. Apollo himself had tricked theFates into allowing him to live beyondhis allotted time; small wonder that he,Admetus, had come to see himself asstanding above others. Yet pushing asideall that, he admitted that he had beenwrong and begged Alcestis to forgivehim and to join with him wholeheartedlyin building a better life in the future.Alcestis was too overcome to respondappropriately, even inwardly, but shemanaged a half nod of affirmation.

That was not the end of it, of course.For what remained of the first two days,except for when they slept – Alcestis intheir old bed, Admetus where Heracleshad stayed – Admetus spent the timedescribing over and over again his suf-ferings, his self-condemnation, theexplanations that were half-excuses.The third day brought a reprieve.Admetus’ father arrived and insistedthat Admetus come with him to makeritual sacrifices to the gods of theUnderworld to thank them for lettingAlcestis return.

She chose to go outside, away fromthe palace, to the field by the river.

Only one maid accompanied her, andshe, at a sign from Alcestis, stayed at adistance. Alcestis exulted in the feelingof her own movements as she walkedabout. Her delight surpassed even theregret she had felt when she had saidgoodbye to all the world’s loveliness:the bird calls, the new leaves shimmer-ing in the sunlight, the caressingwarmth of the air, the endless variety ofthe grasses and the flowers, the grace ofthe dancing butterflies. Even the croak-ing of the frogs was like music. All thisdeliciousness of nature! How could sheever have brought herself to leave it?Could she, would she, do it if the choicehad to be made over again? Thisthought almost made her stop lookingand listening to what surrounded her. Itwas as if Admetus were still speaking toher, his remembered words blocking outeverything else and demanding that shepay attention solely to them. She mustdecide what to do with them.

Ironically, it was Admetus’ self-ques-tioning that led her, for the first time, toquestion herself about her own action.At the time when she consented to takehis place in death, it seemed that shehad no choice. Since his parents hadrefused to save him, she was the onlyone left. A wife had a duty to put herhusband first, just as slaves must servetheir masters, but slaves were notexpected to die for their owners. Therehad been a fleeting moment when shehad tried to picture how it would be ifAdmetus had died and she had lived on.The thought seared her like fire. Shecould not. To miss him at every turn andto know that he was gone because shehad chosen not to save him would beunbearable. But he had viewed it asbearable – and preferable. Was it thatshe loved him more than he loved her?Or was there something else?

Was hers the willing sacrifice of alesser for a greater person? First of all, ofa woman for a man? Were men alwayssuperior to women? Why? Certainlymale and female were equally essentialto ongoing human life. Men went off tobattle and to dangerous exploits. Adme-tus had gone with Jason on the expedi-tion to steal the Golden Fleece. Butwomen bore the pain and risked deathin childbirth every day. And she hadsometimes envied Admetus for havinghad the chance to go on that gloriousadventure. Admetus had accepted the

WHATEVER HAPPENED IN THESSALY? A POSTMODERN FANTASYcontinued from page 7

8

Ask A Classicist

Bono, the nickname of the lead singer ofU2, is short for Bono Vox (which all theWeb sites say means “good voice” or“good in voice” but which actually means“a voice for good” – quite prophetic!) Hisreal name is Paul David Hewson.

The popular puzzle Sudoku began as“Latin Squares,” developed 200 years agoby a blind Swiss mathematician. To learnmore, see http://mathworld.wolfram.com/LatinSquare.html.

Matthew Bogdanos, the Marinecolonel responsible for recovering antiqui-ties in Iraq, has a B.A. (Bucknell) and anM.A. (Columbia) in classics (see his bookThieves of Baghdad: One Marine’s Passionfor Ancient Civilizations and the Journey toRecover the World’s Greatest Stolen Trea-sures, 2005).

Novelist Clive Cussler sends his heroDirk Pitt on an adventure in Trojan Odyssey(2004) that links the ancient world with themodern by interweaving a new theoryabout the geography of Odysseus’ journeywith Celtic myth and a modern-day murdermystery. His underwater exploration organ-ization NUMA (National Underwater andMarine Agency) creates a bond with theRoman past, recalling the second king ofRome, Numa Pompilius, who brought anew order to Romulus’ Rome by establish-ing priesthoods and religious worship.

Kevin Marshall, a classical studies jun-ior at Loyola University New Orleans, wasa six-time champion on Jeopardy in Janu-ary 2006. His success also earned him aplace in the 2006 Tournament of Championsin May.

Did You Know…


possibility of dying but not the reality ofit. She had met it deliberately andunflinchingly. Had she thereby shownherself to be greater than he? In hisimpassioned declarations Admetus hadimplied as much. Was this realizationthe reason for his extreme discomfort?Was it her duty now to restore his imageof himself? To show him that he wasunalterably on a higher level? The alter-native, to insist on her being recognizedas superior, was unthinkable. And, per-haps after all, her consent to die hisdeath was balanced by his braveacknowledgment that he had beenwrong to accept her gift. Could theyhenceforth live as equals in each other’seyes? She would wait and see. Mean-while she must decide what to say tohim at the end of this day when the banagainst her speaking would be lifted.

As the hour drew near, she still hadno clear plan. It was Admetus himselfwho provided the solution. Returningfrom the ceremonies, he had his dis-tressed agitation under control. Perhapsthe sacrificial offerings had somehowmarked the end of the crisis, and herreassuring gestures had been sufficientto console him. In any case, after a longembrace and impassioned kiss, he askedher, quite naturally, what it had beenlike for her during that time that she layin the tomb before Death had come totake her and had been turned away.Had her shade already gone down intoHades? “I had been sleeping when Her-mes woke me,” she began truthfully.And then, seizing the opportunity fordiversion, she proceeded deliberatelyand calmly to lie to her husband.

In place of her peaceful slumber, shefashioned a wondrous tale of how, withHermes, the guide of the dead, she hadvisited that other world. She describedthings as she had heard about them as achild. For people loved to talk aboutwhat was reported to go on down there.She told how she had trembled at thesight of the punishment of the famousdoers of evil: Ixion on the wheel, Tanta-lus forever trying to eat and drink theever receding fruit and water, thedaughters of Danaus commanded tocarry water in sieves, and other unhappyones. Mostly the shades were motion-less as though suspended between lifeand death. But some favored ones werein a lovely sort of meadow, movingabout blissfully and singing the praisesof Demeter and Persephone. She narrat-ed all this in great detail. Throughout,Admetus listened intently, seeminglypleased that things in Hades were as hehad been told they were.

Now signs of dawn were appearing,for Athena did not prolong the night forthis pair as she later obligingly did forOdysseus and Penelope. Alcestis has-tened to conclude her story, saying thata messenger had come to tell her shewas to retrace her steps; she was soonasleep in the tomb until Hermes wokeher. She told Admetus that Hermes hadgiven her the vial of poison to use

against any enemy if need should arise.She did not mention the one said toinsure never-ending life. She felt reluc-tant to suggest that she had the powerto stave off Death permanently –assuming that Admetus or anyone elsewould believe her. She had hidden thelittle box in the veil Heracles had givenher. On the first night she had laid theveil itself at the bottom of a chest shehad brought with her as part of herdowry, which everyone knew she alonehad the right to open. But these thingswere only in her thoughts during themoment of absolute silence that fol-lowed her simple statement, “This isthe end of my story.”

Admetus, who had been totallycaught up in her account, looked visiblyfatigued. With apparent effort, hebrought them back to the present. “Youmust answer me finally,” he said. “Canyou forgive me for choosing my life overyours?” His voice was anxious andpleading but at the same time hopefuland expectant. Perhaps he felt that hiscase was serious but had been well pre-sented. Alcestis took a deep breath. Shelaid her hand caressingly on his cheek,and she said, “We have both been bornagain. I have been brought back fromthe grave. You have been saved fromdrowning in a pool of despair. The godshave given each of us a second life. Wewill make it together.” She added light-ly, “I am glad that you have not hadtime to have that stone statue made ofme, the one that you said would lie inmy place. Our bed would not be bigenough for three.” Their love-makingwas apocalyptic, enhanced for Alcestis

as the wonder of nature had been inten-sified for her that morning. Eventuallythey both slept far into the daylighthours.

In the days that followed, Admetuswas keeping his promise that theirrenewed life would be better. He wasalways tender with her, ever seeking toprotect her from the slightest discom-fort. He was more gentle with the slaveswhen they failed to carry out ordersexactly as given or were careless. Per-haps he remembered instances in thepast when Alcestis had urged leniency.Or else he had modified his view of howmuch he had the right to demand ofothers. Each day he talked with herabout what he planned to do or haddone, giving her a chance to respond.When she timidly questioned him, helistened and replied respectfully. On afew occasions he asked her opinionabout a proposed action; once he fol-lowed her suggestion. And she neversaw him looking at one of the slavewomen in a way that in the past had lefther slightly uneasy.

After a week or so, Admetus decidedto play the host on a grand scale. Firsthe gave a great festival for the Thes-salians. He mentioned the idea of invit-ing Apollo, but dropped it. Alcestisdecided he had spoken facetiously.After this there were smaller gatheringsfor which he asked men from moreremote places to come to spend a fewdays at the palace. For Alcestis’ pleasurehe told them that their wives, too,would be welcome. On each occasion hemade a little speech with everyone pres-ent. He expressed his pride in Alcestisand his gratitude. He himself sketchedthe narrative of recent events, sparingAlcestis the embarrassment of having tospeak publicly. He acknowledged thattoo late he had regretted that he hadaccepted Alcestis’ self-sacrifice, but heexplained that he had taken the divinepronouncement that a substitute wouldbe acceptable as a command that hemust find one. But the gods had sentHeracles just in time, no doubt foresee-ing that Admetus would hide his grief,give the hero hospitality, and receivethe glorious reward. Possibly the immor-tals had known from the beginning allthat would be and planned it so.

As for the guests, a few whisperedamong themselves that the whole talehad been a hoax, a deception. No mortalcould die and come alive again. Such athing had never happened and couldnot happen. They hinted darkly thatthis sort of hubris might very welloffend the gods and bring disaster. But

continued on page 14 9

Admetus had accepted the possibility

of dying but not the reality of it. She had met

it deliberately and unflinchingly.


Health and disease have playedan important part in humanreligion and history. Although

our conquest of disease has extendedthe modern lifespan to seventy-eightyears in the Western world, comparedwith twenty-five to thirty-five years inthe ancient world, we are still fright-ened by and concerned with plagues. Inthe modern world, emerging strains ofviruses and bacteria, such as influenzaand AIDS, cause much anxiety and mil-lions of deaths on a yearly basis. Thesecontinuing tragedies are reminiscent ofpast centuries in which a husband andwife endured the deaths of half theirchildren from infectious disease. Inaddition to the normal patterns of dis-ease in childhood, epidemics wouldoften strike out of nowhere and carry offlarge percentages of the population. Forexample, a plague that occurred in thereign of Marcus Aurelius (A.D. 161-180)killed a tenth of the population of theRoman Empire, and the Black Death(bubonic plague) wiped out nearly halfthe population of Western Europe inthe fourteenth century.

A number of accounts of plagues andpestilences have reached us fromancient Egypt, the ancient Near East,and classical antiquity. An early refer-ence to what is probably bubonic plagueis found in 1 Samuel 5, which tells ofevents in the eleventh century B.C.God has sent pestilence to smite thePhilistines because they offended Himby capturing the Ark of the Lord. Simi-lar descriptions of plagues occur in clas-sical literature. In Homer’s Iliad 1.443-67, Apollo sends perhaps typhus orbubonic plague upon the Achaeansbecause they dishonored his priestChryses. In Sophocles’ Oedipus the King1-131 (especially lines 14-57), a plaguestrikes Thebes because of the death ofLaius. The most famous account of aplague in classical literature, however, isThucydides’ graphic description of thehistorical Plague of Athens, whichstruck the Athenians in the second yearof the Peloponnesian War (430 B.C.)and devastated the population. Whilethis was not the most important plaguein antiquity in terms of mortality andpolitical and socio-economic conse-quences, Thucydides has made it sobecause of his influence as a historian.

Thucydides presents a detaileddescription of the symptoms of thePlague of Athens that is marked by care-ful observation and woven into a tersenarrative about the devastation of war anddisease. In his History of the PeloponnesianWar 2.47-55, Thucydides describes howthe disease was accompanied by a pustu-lar rash, high fever, and diarrhea and howit usually resulted in the death of the vic-tim. He relates that it originated inEthiopia and spread into Egypt andLibya and through the Near East beforearriving at the Piraeus, the port of Athens.From the Piraeus, the epidemic movedrapidly into the city itself. Thucydidesindicates that it was highly contagiousand infected anyone who cared for thesick. He himself suffered from the plaguebut was one of the lucky ones who sur-vived. Others were not so fortunate.Entire families were wiped out, and thedead became so numerous that corpsescould not be buried and were left wherethey had died.

Thucydides states that he will setdown the nature of the disease and

explain the symptoms by which it maybe recognized if it should ever break outagain (2.48.3). He was influenced byHippocrates, who lived at the sametime, both in his description of theplague and also in his application ofHippocratic doctrine to his writing ofhistory. In a sense, his account of thedisease parallels the overall themes ofhis work: history as an example and aforce that repeats, and the decay ofAthens both by war and disease.

The political ramifications of thePlague of Athens were enormous. Sincethe epidemic did not penetrate thePeloponnesus, Athens was devastatedby the outbreak, but Sparta was rela-tively unscathed. The Plague of Athenscarried off perhaps twenty-five percentof the population of Athens during thefirst few years of the PeloponnesianWar. The Athenian leader Pericles per-ished of the disease in 429 B.C. Theplague was a major reason for the defeatof Athens in the Peloponnesian War. Itwas economically and socially devastat-ing to Athens, both at the time and in

THE PLAGUE OF ATHENS: CURRENT ANALYTIC TECHNIQUESby Robert J. Littman

10

Fig. 3. Plan of the mass burial in Kerameikos. Reprinted with permission from E.Baziotopoulou-Valavani, “A Mass Burial from the Cemetery of Kerameikos,” in M. Stamatopoulou and M. Yeroulanou, eds. Excavating Classical Culture, RecentArchaeological Discoveries in Greece (2002), 191.


the subsequent centuries. The combi-nation of disease and war depopulatedAthens and changed Greek history,which might have been very differenthad Athens won the war.

The Plague of Athens has beenimportant both for its literary influenceand its scientific interest. The Romanpoet Lucretius wrote a long and horrify-ing account of the plague, imitatingThucydides, in Book 6 of De RerumNatura. In the sixth century, Procopiusimitated Thucydides in his account ofthe bubonic plague that struck Byzan-tium. But there have been many morescholarly investigations of the Plague ofAthens than literary imitations.

Since the Renaissance, scholarlystudies have mirrored the medical con-cepts of the time in which they werewritten. By the late nineteenth century,most physicians and medical scientistsperforming research in the burgeoninglaboratories of Western Europe and theUnited States generally had acceptedwhat was known as the germ theory (thetheory that micro-organisms cause dis-ease), and ancient epidemics becamethe subjects of fresh studies founded onthe new approaches of epidemiology,which is the study of the distributionand determinants of health events suchas diseases and wellness in human pop-ulations.

Numerous essays on the Plague ofAthens appeared in the twentieth cen-tury, and most scholars and physicians,equipped with an etiology and some sta-tistical application of fatalities in themodern variants of the disease, attempt-ed to identify the Athenian pestilencewith one or more diseases. SinceThucydides provided the symptoms,the resultant studies were symptoma-tologies, which were correlated with adisease that presumably matched theancient description. Two “diagnoses”became prominent in the modern litera-ture on the Athenian plague. The firstdiagnosis was smallpox, which seemedto incorporate almost all of the Thucy-didean details. Along with M. L.Littman, I argued for smallpox as theAthenian plague in “The AthenianPlague: Smallpox,” TAPA, 100 (1969),261-75, an article often cited as the“smallpox essay” by other scholarsresearching the problem.

The second most common retrospec-tive diagnosis has been endemic typhus,represented by “The Plague ofAthens,” a section in the widely readRats, Lice and History (1934) by theprominent twentieth-century epidemi-ologist, Hans Zinsser, who was one of

the pioneers in the study of typhus anddeveloped the first typhus vaccine in1934. Two other frequently cited stud-ies followed Zinsser’s diagnosis: W. P.MacArthur, “The Athenian Plague: AMedical Note,” CQ, n. s. 4 (1954), 171-74 (with a response by D. L. Page on174) and John Scarborough, “Thucy-dides, Greek Medicine and the Plagueat Athens: A Summary of Possibilities,”Episteme, 4 (1970), 77-90. Scarborough,especially, calls attention to Thucy-dides’ description as accurate in its owncontexts but incapable of accounting forany evolutionary shifts in the causativeorganisms. He argues that any moderndiagnosis is flawed because of possiblemutations over time. While Scarboroughmight be correct if the disease describedby Thucydides was caused by a micro-organism that was prone to mutation (astyphus is), other micro-organisms, suchas smallpox, are very stable over time.

In 1994, Thomas E. Morgan analyzedThucydides’ medical knowledge, or thelack of it, in “Plague or Poetry? Thucy-dides on the Epidemic at Athens,”TAPA, 124 (1994), 197-209. Morgan, aphysician-classicist, argues that Thucy-dides desired to contrast the tragedy ofwar and the pathos of the disease withthe lofty ideals presented by Pericles inthe funeral oration. Thus, in his opin-ion, the descriptions of the plague arequite imprecise not only because theHippocratic or other terminologies var-ied from those of modern epidemiologybut also, more importantly, becauseThucydides employed dramatic licensein his account of the plague. The weak-ness in Morgan’s argument is that histhesis is somewhat inconsistent withThucydides’ statement that hedescribes the symptoms so that the dis-ease can be identified if it breaks outagain.

Other possible candidates for theidentification of the Plague of Athenshave ranged from measles, typhoidfever, bubonic plague, anthrax, and ergo-tism, to toxic shock syndrome withstaphylococcus, scarlet fever, Rift ValleyFever, and arboviruses, but none ofthese possibilities has gained manyadherents among students of ancientepidemics, as suggested by James Lon-grigg, “The Great Plague at Athens,”History of Science, 18 (1980), 209-25 andby David M. Morens and me in “Thucy-dides’ Syndrome Reconsidered: NewThoughts on the ‘Plague of Athens,’”American Journal of Epidemiology, 140(1994), 621-28 and 631.

Beginning in the second half of thetwentieth century, new methodologies

developed that allowed fresh examina-tions of diseases, plagues, and pan-demics in the ancient world. Thesemethodologies were based on new aca-demic disciplines, including forensicanthropology, demography, and epi-demiology. Recent studies of the Plagueof Athens reflect these developments inmethodology.

In 1992, I collaborated with Dr.David Morens, a noted epidemiologistat the National Institute of Health, tobring the techniques of epidemiology tothe examination of the disease and touse such devices as mathematical mod-eling to look at various possibilities; theresults of our research were published in“Epidemiology of the Plague atAthens,” TAPA, 122 (1992), 271-304.Mathematical modeling allowed us toexamine infection and attack ratesbased on the various candidates and todetermine how long it takes a particulardisease to spread in a city and how longit would be able to remain endemic.Several diseases, such as measles, had tobe eliminated as possibilities becausethe population of Athens was too smallto sustain an epidemic of them for morethan a few months. Thus, the best pos-sibilities were narrowed to typhus,typhus-like diseases, and smallpox.

Demography, teamed with molecularbiology and anthropology, is also prov-ing useful in the study of ancient dis-ease. This is well exemplified by WalterScheidel’s Death on the Nile: Disease andthe Demography of Roman Egypt (2001)and Robert Sallares’ monumentalaccount of malaria in ancient Rome,Malaria and Rome: A History of Malariain Ancient Italy (2002). Using molecularbiology, genetics, and parasitology, aswell as demography, modification of lifetables, and techniques of anthropology,Sallares has reached the startling conclu-sion that this endemic disease substan-tially affected life expectancy in theRoman Empire. As these new disci-plines develop and as our scientific toolsincrease, the next century should bringnew and exciting insights into the histo-ry of plagues and disease in the ancientworld.

In addition to new developments inmethodology, scientific discoveries andnew technology have allowed freshinsights into the very essence of life.Chief among these are the discovery ofDNA and the ability to analyze it, MRI(Magnetic Resonance Imaging), and CTScan (Computed Axial Tomography),that is, three-dimensional pictures ofhard and soft tissue inside the humanbody.



The study of ancient DNA hasbegun to provide new clues for thestudy of plagues of antiquity. Ancientmicrobial DNA has been successfullyextracted; see A. R. Zink et al., “Charac-terization of Mycobacterium tuberculo-sis complex DNAs from Egyptian mum-mies by spoligotyping,” Journal of Clini-cal Microbiology, 41 (1) (2003), 359-67.Four-hundred-year-old DNA of Yersiniapestis, the micro-organism that causestyphus, has been extracted from dentalpulp; see Michel Drancourt et al.,“Detection of 400-year-old Yersiniapestis DNA in human dental pulp: Anapproach to the diagnosis of ancientsepticemia,” Proceedings of the NationalAcademy of Science U. S. A., October 13,95 (21) (1998), 12637-40. The extractionof human DNA is more problematic.There are claims that NeanderthalDNA has been extracted and otherclaims that it is not possible to extractDNA more than 800 years old.

In any event, microbial DNA mightprovide a useful tool for identifying thePlague of Athens. In 2001, a mass gravethat belonged to the plague years wasdiscovered at the cemetery of the Ker-ameikos in Athens (see Fig. 3). Theexcavation was conducted by EffieBaziotopoulou-Valavani, a member ofthe Greek Archaeological Service. Herexcavation report and the date of thefinds are included in M. Stamatopoulouand M.Yeroulanou, eds., ExcavatingClassical Culture: Recent ArchaeologicalDiscoveries in Greece (2002), 187-201. Thestudy of the skeletal material wasundertaken by Professor Manolis Papa-grigorakis of the University of Athens.(Manolis Papagrigorakis et al., “DNAexamination of ancient dental pulpincriminates typhoid fever as a probablecause of the Plague of Athens,” Interna-tional Journal of Infectious Diseases, 2006).He was able to extract ancient microbialtyphoid DNA from the remains. He hasposited that the probable cause of thePlague of Athens was this disease. It ispremature, however, to draw this con-clusion. We know from Hippocrates thattyphoid was most likely endemic in theGreek world. The presence of anendemic disease does not necessarilyindicate that it was the cause of death.The other problem is that the samplingis extremely small – three skeletons. Hehas made an intriguing start that onehopes will lead to new information

about palaeopathology and the plagueyears.

Other modern technology may alsoone day be applicable to the study ofthe Plague of Athens, particularly ifmore physical remains from the plagueyears are unearthed. The ManchesterMummy Project under Dr. RosalieDavid has used new scientific tech-niques and analyses to look at physicalevidence of ancient disease, includingschistasomiasis. David’s multidiscipli-nary team, made up of archaeologists,scientists, and physicians, applies mod-ern forensic and clinical techniques toexamine ancient tissue and establishwhat diseases affected people in the dis-tant past. They have found that manyfamiliar diseases and conditions – obesi-ty, osteoarthritis, slipped discs, blockedarteries, and pleurisy – affected theancient Egyptians. But the researchersparticularly want to track the progress ofschistasomiasis, a chronic debilitatingdisease that today is estimated to affect200-300 million people in seventy-ninecountries. In some Egyptian villages, itcan affect as much as eighty percent ofthe population. It has been foundextensively in ancient mummies.

CT scanning is also particularly use-ful in the study of ancient mummiessince it allows analysis without thedestruction of the mummy. The Egypt-ian Mummy Project, under the directionof Dr. Zahi Hawass of the SupremeCouncil of Antiquities, Egypt, with mycollaboration and that of Dr. DeWolfeMiller of the University of Hawaii, hasbegun using a portable CT scanner(donated by Siemens of Germany) tostudy the remains of mummies, includ-ing Tutankhamen. Recently, the Stan-ford-NASA National BiocomputationCenter in Palo Alto scanned themummy of a 2000-year-old child fromthe Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum inSan Jose, California. Using more than60,000 high-resolution X-ray imagesfrom scans, they generated thirty-fivetimes as much data as that from thescanning of Tutankhamen (Michael D.Lemonik, “Secrets of a 2000-Year-OldChild,” Time Magazine, 166, No. 7,August 15, 2005, 56-57). This new tech-nology could also prove an invaluableforensic tool in studying ancientplagues.

Why is it important to study the dis-eases of the past? The history of medi-cine and various practices of the pastallow us to understand modern medicalpractices. Our Western scientific medi-cine, with its emphasis on observation,natural rather than divine causation, andexperimentation, as well as our medicalethics, are all in the Greek Hippocratictradition. When researchers today domedical experiments, they often makeuse of rats and other laboratory animalsto see the progress of disease, suscepti-bility, and the acquisition of immunityin the short generations of their lives.The study of the history of medicine,however, allows us to use humans, thatis, the humans of the past, as laboratorysubjects and to track out how they livedand how they died. Using modernmethodologies and technology,researchers in the not-too-distant futuremay be able to provide an explanationconvincing to all for the identity of thePlague of Athens that so devastatedAthens in the fifth century B.C. and thateven today makes its impact on the his-torical and scientific imaginations ofreaders of Thucydides’ history.

Robert J. Littman ([email protected])teaches at the University of Hawaii atManoa. His area of research is Greek andGraeco-Egyptian medicine.

THE PLAGUE OF ATHENS: CURRENT ANALYTIC TECHNIQUEScontinued from page 11

12

Coming in FutureIssues of Amphora

Crossing the Styx: The Afterlife of theAfterlife

The Oxyrhynchus Papyri

What’s New in Ancient Magic?

The J. Paul Getty Museum

Roman Power and Imperial Self-Esteem

The Art Infusion Project at the U. S. Mint

The Symposium on Film

Review of HBO’s ROME

Review of Harrius Potter et PhilosophiLapis

The Hopi Myth Field Mouse Goes toWar

Neo-Latin Literature

Hunting the Lithuanian Bison

The Colony of Augusta Emerita inRoman Lusitania


Barry Unsworth. The Songs of the Kings.Doubleday (http://www.randomhouse.com/doubleday), 2003. Pp. 336.Hardcover $26. ISBN 0385501145; W.W. Norton & Company (http://www.wwnorton.com), 2004. Pp. 342. Paper-back $14. ISBN 0393322831.

T he Songs of the Kings is the fourteenthnovel by Barry Unsworth, a historical

novelist who never visits the same localetwice. He has set novels in Greece in 1908(Pascali’s Island, 1980), contemporaryVenice (Stone Virgin, 1985), and four-teenth-century England (Morality Play,1995). Sacred Hunger, which deals withthe eighteenth-century slave trade, won theBooker Prize in 1991, but my personalfavorite among his previous novels is TheRage of the Vulture (1982), a tale with dis-tinct echoes of Conrad that is set in Istanbulas the Ottoman Empire dissolves. In all hisnovels, Unsworth does not seek exoticismor escapism in earlier times and places butuses historical locales to reflect on signifi-cant political, social, and artistic issues.

After 9/11, as talk of war escalatedand Western forces gathered to avenge anoutrageous violation by an Eastern enemy,the Trojan War offered provocative paral-lels. One result was a number of theatricalproductions across the United States andGreat Britain of Euripides’ Iphigenia atAulis, in which a young girl is sacrificed tomake the war possible (on these produc-tions see now Edith Hall, “Iphigenia andher Mother at Aulis,” in Rebel Women:Staging Ancient Greek Drama Today, edit-ed by John Dillon and S. E. Wilmer,2005). Another result is this powerful novelof ideas, Unsworth’s most politicallyengaged narrative to date.

In Songs, set at Aulis where the Greekforces are gathered to sail to Troy, the cen-tral characters are not Agamemnon, Iphige-nia, and Clytemnestra, as in Euripides’play, but rather Calchas, here an Asianpriest; Odysseus, now Agamemnon’s chiefadvisor; and a Homer-like Singer. The cen-tral theme of this novel is how position andpower distort ways of knowing and commu-nicating. The priest seeks “meaning, not

stories,” but Odysseus uses rhetoric tomanipulate the king, and like an embeddedreporter, the Singer is gradually seducedinto promoting the war effort and the sacri-fice that will make it possible.

Unsworth’s narrative is rich with detailsdrawn from classical myth, texts, archaeol-ogy, religion, and history. These are notused to provide “atmosphere” but to for-ward the novel’s themes. For example, themeaning of the omen mentioned in Aeschy-lus’ Agamemnon – a pregnant hare killedby two eagles – is repeatedly debated. Atthe same time, the analogies with contem-porary history and politics are very clear.Helen’s departure with Paris is only a pre-text; beset by economic problems in theArgolid, “Commander-in-Chief” Agamem-non is undertaking this war to acquire avast maritime empire with “abundantcheap metals.” His advisors who, like someof our contemporary chicken hawks are“besotted with military power” despite hav-ing “never worn a sword,” invoke “justice”and “destiny”; the Greeks, they argue,“have a duty towards these people” who“live in ignorance and superstition . . . tobring light into their darkness” (282).

Unsworth’s portrait of Odysseus is espe-cially acute: frustrated by poverty, drivenby ambition, the lord of barren little Ithacauses his intelligence and fluency in order todeceive and spin. The novelist even putscontemporary language into his characters’mouths – Odysseus tries to “incentivize”Iphigenia, Diomedes says war alwaysinvolves “collateral damage,” Achilles wor-ries about his “image,” Iphigenia thinks sheand Achilles “are on the same wave-length.” This does not reduce the story to

an obvious allegory of contemporary fig-ures and events but demonstrates the dan-ger of accepting others’ language andideas without question. When intellectualsand artists are complicit with those inpower, truth is the first casualty.

Unsworth’s boldest addition to the storyis Iphigenia’s Asian slave girl. As an under-ling and outsider, Sisipyla has knowledgeunavailable to her mistress, a shrewd abili-ty to assess others, and the skill to play theroles expected of her while keeping herown counsel. After the plan to sacrificeIphigenia comes to light, she tries to con-vince the princess that the glorious “des-tiny” Odysseus has dangled before her is“only a word . . . . You are using their lan-guage. They have put their language intoyour mouth” (333). She comes up with acourageous plan to save her mistress bysubstituting herself as the victim, but Iphige-nia prefers clichés and decides to “savethis great expedition, forge the Greeks intoa single nation, and be remembered in thesongs as the savior of a whole people”(333).

The combination of ancient and modernelements reminds us that historical parallelscan inform current debates and that classi-cal texts, including those of Homer andEuripides, have ideological dimensions.The Singer begins by denying that a Songis like a political speech (93). But Calchasinsists “songs are about what peoplealready believe or what it is wished theyshould believe” (224), and the Singer endsup justifying his submission to the powerful:“it is the stories told by the strong, thesongs of the kings, that are believed in theend” (296). This novel helps the readerquestion songs that serve the interests ofkings – ancient or contemporary.

Mary-Kay Gamel ([email protected])is Professor of Classics, Comparative Litera-ture, and Theater Arts at the University ofCalifornia, Santa Cruz. She regularlystages productions of ancient drama, oftenin her own translations.

Book Review: The Songs of the Kingsby Mary-Kay Gamel

13

The combination of ancient and modern

elements reminds us thathistorical parallels can

inform current debates.


most accepted the story. Clearly Adme-tus had long been favored by Apollo,and everyone had heard that Heracleshad achieved deeds only a little lessimpossible than this one. The menenvied Admetus for having so noblydutiful a wife. The women disagreedamong themselves as to whether a wifeshould be expected to die for her hus-band, but they all admitted that theythemselves would never have had thecourage to do so voluntarily. They con-cluded that Alcestis must be differentfrom other women. Perhaps she shouldbe revered as a daemon, a holy onewhose power persisted even after death.Indeed, as the years went by, therewere rumors that someone had comeacross a roadside shrine at which offer-ings to Alcestis were laid. Alcestislaughed at these, inwardly fearful lestshe be suspected of encouraging so out-rageous a claim. Admetus denied thereports almost resentfully. As time wenton, he seemed disinclined to talk aboutthe earlier events. When one day his sonand daughter asked him to recite onceagain the account of the miraculous hap-penings, he refused. “All that should belet rest in the past,” he said. “We mustattend to what the present demands of us.”

In fact, before long, action wasurgently needed on two matters: First,their daughter’s marriage. Out of themany men who asked for her, threeappeared to be most appropriate. Alces-tis, having watched the girl’s face whenshe had heard them named, told Adme-tus which one she would like to see cho-sen. But he announced that he hadalready selected one of the others andhad begun to make arrangements.Alcestis was dismayed that he had notconsulted her in making the decision,and she sadly reflected that for a longtime now he had seldom shared histhoughts and plans with her as he usedto do in the months closer to the day ofher return.

Soon after the wedding came thenews that, with Agamemnon as leader, afleet was gathering at Aulis to sail andmake war against Troy. ImmediatelyAdmetus declared that he himselfwould join them. But Alcestis pointedout that these warriors were not of hisgeneration, and she reminded him thatHelen’s abduction had nothing to dowith him. It was her former suitors who

had sworn to defend her and whomevershe chose as husband. The case was dif-ferent with their son Eumelus. Thoughhe was too young to be a serious con-tender, his father had sent suitor’s giftson his behalf, and Eumelus was boundby the oath. He had to go to Troy. Aslight altercation arose when he asked ifhe could take with him the pair of mareswhich Apollo himself had raised whilehe worked out his sentence as Admetus’servant. Admetus had never permittedanyone but himself to drive them and atfirst refused his son’s request. ButAlcestis, who evidently still had someinfluence, persuaded him that Apollowould surely want the animals he hadtended to show their superiority andthat glory would be reflected on theirowner as well.

Shortly after Eumelus had set sailwith his eleven ships bound for Aulis,Admetus summoned his neighbors tojoin him in a series of hunting expedi-tions, perhaps to distract himself fromanxiety over Eumelus; possibly he alsostill felt impelled to prove that he wasnot afraid to face dangers. On the huntshe displayed a certain recklessness,which one day resulted in his getting adeep gash in his thigh when he wenttoo close to a wild boar. Things werenever the same after that afternoon.The injury gave him such pain that heprayed aloud for death. Gradually thewound healed over, but he could notmove easily or without discomfort, andhe remained very weak; soon, for him-self and for all around him, he becamean invalid. Ashamed to have hisacquaintances see him so diminished,he stayed inside the palace and refusedto receive visitors. The man whose hos-pitality had made him famous lived nowas a recluse. But not as a resignedrecluse at peace with himself. Deprivedby weakness and by pride from mean-ingful activity, boredom brought him asmuch suffering as his physical ailments.Pitying him, Alcestis was almost gladwhen she once caught sight of him awk-wardly making his way into the areawhere the maids slept. Her emotionswere mixed when she noted how short atime he stayed there.

Admetus’ self-pity was all too evi-dent. Twenty times a day he announcedto Alcestis that he was dying, at firstwith despair, then insisting that Deathcould not come too soon. Finally one

day he timidly asked Alcestis if it wouldnot be best if he put an end to himself,deliberately. Not knowing whetherwhat he secretly wanted was agreementor dissuasion, she evaded, asking if hedid not fear that it might be unlawfuland an offence to the Divine Will if hepreempted their right to determine hisend. She told him, “You would be angryif any of your slaves destroyed them-selves. You are the property of the godsas your slaves belong to you.” Hisresponse showed that he did not want tobe dissuaded. He said, “The gods havemade me a Tithonus, extending my lifebeyond natural limits but letting mewither away to worthlessness.”

“None of the Divine Ones is likelyto turn you into a grasshopper,” shereplied a bit tartly.

Admetus continued to argue, “Thegods have given me the power to choosefor myself. I have the right to die; itwould not be self-destruction, it wouldbe self-deliverance.”

On the third day after that, Alcestisheard the words she dreaded but was surewould finally be spoken. Admetus said toher, “Alcestis, you can and must help me.You can give me the poison that Hermesgave you. If you love me, you will do thisunless . . .” He paused, then added,“unless you are saving it for yourself.”

So shocked she seemed almost tostop breathing, Alcestis exclaimed,“How could I possibly see you die bymy hand!” In truth, the thought thatshe might herself one day find in thisgift from Persephone a release from suf-fering was not wholly new to her.Though she had hidden the fact fromAdmetus, she had been having increas-ingly severe pain in her right side andwas wondering how much more of it shecould bear without collapsing.

For the next couple of days Adme-tus, while reiterating his complaint thatthe gods were making him pay now forhaving had his life prolonged earlier, didnot bring up his former request. Butthen Alcestis, coming upon him unex-pectedly, discovered him apparentlytrying to open the chest that she hadkept tightly fastened. Admetus mut-tered something about accidentallystumbling against it, but both knew thetruth, unacceptable though it was. Real-izing that he was actually ready to stealfrom her, she was hardly surprisedwhen, a few hours later, he first openlybegged her to give him the vial of poi-son, then threatened that, if she did notlove him enough to obey, he still hadthe strength to force her to let him havewhat he so desperately wanted. Alcestis

WHATEVER HAPPENED IN THESSALY? A POSTMODERN FANTASYcontinued from page 9

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looked silently at him for several longminutes; at last she said, “Very well, as Ionce chose to die for you, so I will donow what I believe is right for me to do– though it is with even more regret thistime.” She walked into the room wherethe chest was, opened it, and took outthe vial she needed.

As Admetus watched, she poured itscontent into a cup, added a little wine,and handed it to him. Before touching itwith his lips, he said solemnly, “Alces-tis, you have saved me once again, mayyou always be remembered as the mostdevoted of women.” He drank the mix-ture. After emptying the cup, heinquired whether the poison wouldwork quickly or how long it would take.

“Hermes did not tell me,” she said.“Best to lie down for a bit and try tosleep.” Alcestis left the room. She vio-lently threw the empty vial onto thestone floor, where it smashed into bits.It was the one with the image of theGorgon.

Epilogue That evening Stella and her brother

and I went to an old taverna. It was onthe very edge of Larissa. Along withtownspeople were some country types,seated at the tables in the far corner.Three musicians played a mixture ofcurrent popular hits and the old-stylepieces that predated the taverna itself.When they began to play the traditionalhalf-Oriental numbers, one by one sev-eral of the rustics danced in the centralspace, giving intricate performances oftheir own invention. Finally a trulyancient man, a shriveled, bent-over fig-ure, who looked almost incapable ofmoving, stepped into the now emptycircle. A hush came over the conversa-tions, and all around seemed to holdtheir breath. “Who is that?” I asked.

Stella whispered, “We call him ‘theAntique.’ Nobody knows much abouthim. We can’t even guess how old he is.He lives in a little shelter, and theneighbors slip food into his place. Mostof the time he sleeps, but now and thenhe comes here. Look at him.”

I watched incredulously. It was likeseeing a newly emerged moth, little bylittle transforming itself from shapelesschrysalis to winged glory. In perfect har-mony with the music, the man at firstappeared to be dancing while standingstill, flexing his muscles rhythmicallybut without changing his position. Grad-ually he proceeded to move his legs andfeet in exquisitely complex steps, thenhis arms and hands in a manner to

arouse envy in a hula dancer or a strip-tease artist. Finally, as if to show him-self more than equal to the others whohad danced, he performed the tricksthat they had done. By a gesture, heordered that a glass be placed on thefloor in front of him. Bending over, helifted and drank from it, using only hismouth. His glass was larger than theones the others had used.

The crowd applauded. ‘The Antique’slowly, with a sort of hopping motion,started back to his seat. As he passed ourgroup, I spoke to him in Greek. “What isyour name? Is it Admetus?”

He croaked out some sort of reply,but I could not understand it. What hesaid sounded like “Brekekekex.”

Hazel E. Barnes is Professor of PhilosophyEmerita at the University of Colorado atBoulder where she taught also in the Depart-ments of Classics and Humanities. Shetranslated Sartre’s Being and Nothing-ness and has written several books on Exis-tentialism. Publications in classics includeThe Meddling Gods: Four Essays onClassical Themes (1974). Her latest bookis The Story I Tell Myself: A Venture inExistentialist Autobiography (1998). Theimagined sequel to Euripides’ Alcestis waswritten to be read at her ninetieth birthdayparty, solely for amusement.

15

AThis large, circular familymausoleum in the Campus Martius

in Rome was completed in 28 B.C. (Sueto-nius, Augustus 100). Originally it wasabout 295 feet in diameter by 137 feet inheight. Pillaging and multiple uses over thecenturies damaged the mausoleum, but itwas restored to its current state in the1930’s by Mussolini (see Fig. 4). The burialchamber of the mausoleum, which consistsof a circular hall surrounding a central con-crete pillar, is not open for visits.

Most of the individuals interred in themausoleum were cremated, and no ancientremains have survived. First to be buried, in23 B.C., was Marcellus (Augustus’ nephewand son-in-law). Marcellus’ interment wasfollowed, in 12 B.C., by that of Agrippa(Augustus’ life-long friend and second hus-band of his daughter Julia) and, in 11 B.C.,by that of Octavia (Augustus’ sister).Drusus, the son of Augustus’ wife Livia, wasburied in 9 B.C., and the burials of Augus-tus’ grandsons Lucius (A.D. 2) and Gaius(A.D. 4) preceded the burial of Augustushimself in A.D. 14. Augustus had excludedthe two Julias, his disgraced daughter andgranddaughter, from burial in the mau-soleum, but his third wife Livia, having sur-vived to see her son Tiberius made emper-or, was interred in A.D. 29. Tiberius wasburied here in A.D. 37 as was Tiberius’nephew Germanicus (A.D. 19) andTiberius’ son Drusus (A.D. 23). In A.D. 37,Germanicus’ son, the emperor GaiusCaligula, gathered up the remains of hismother, Agrippina the Elder, and his broth-ers Nero (not the future emperor) andDrusus for burial in the mausoleum. GaiusCaligula himself was buried here after hisassassination in A.D. 41.

Poppaea, the second wife of the emper-or Nero, was also buried here (uncremat-ed) in A.D. 65 after Nero kicked her andher unborn child to death. The interment ofthe emperor Nerva, who succeeded theautocratic emperor Domitian, is the last(A.D. 98). He was the only non-Julio-Claudi-an buried in the mausoleum.

QWho was buried in the Mausoleum of Augustus?

Ask A Classicist

Fig. 4. Tomb of Augustus in 1982(#ac822933). Photo credit: Leo C.Curran, 1997 (http://wings.buffalo.edu/AandL/Maecenas).


Libraries have changed drasticallyover the last twenty years. Com-puters have replaced card catalogs.

Online journals and other electronicresources have become as important asthe printed page. In this changing land-scape, librarians educated in classics arestill in demand. Despite technologicaladvances, and sometimes even becauseof them, my career as an academiclibrarian continues to draw heavily onthe knowledge of Greek, Latin, andclassical civilization I acquired duringmy graduate studies.

As is true for most librarians, some ofmy key responsibilities are traceable toantiquity. Acquiring books, for example,was a major activity of the renownedlibrary of Alexandria, in Egypt. InLibraries in the Ancient World (2001),Lionel Casson relates that thePtolemies “sent out agents with well-filled purses and orders to buy whateverbooks they could, of every kind onevery subject” (34). Collecting on thisscale would be financially impossibletoday, but acquiring material is still amajor undertaking in research libraries.Subject specialists, sometimes calledselectors or bibliographers, build alibrary’s collection by ordering books,journals, CD’s, and other materials indisciplines with which they are familiar.In addition, subject specialists maintaintheir section of a library’s collection byreviewing titles for preservation,replacement, offsite storage, and with-drawal. At NYU, where I have beenemployed for the last four years, I serveas the subject specialist for classics, Hel-lenic studies, and philosophy.

The Alexandrians also devoted mucheffort to organizing their library’s vastholdings. Callimachus, best known as apoet, compiled its first serious catalog.His Pinakes (Tables), which survives onlyin quotations, was a detailed bibliogra-phy, in 120 books, of everything writtenin Greek. Scholars consider this work anexpanded version of a comprehensivecatalog to the library’s holdings, whichCallimachus compiled while employedthere (Casson, 39). A well-organized col-lection makes for easily-found books.Cataloging is still, therefore, a centralactivity in libraries. Today’s catalogerscreate online records for the items alibrary acquires. In doing so, they ana-

lyze and describe material according toestablished national standards, followinga systematic structure designed to helplibrary users locate information. Therecords they produce make possible thecomputerized library catalogs familiar tous all.

One aspect that has not long been apart of librarianship, however, is publicservices. Services that we take for grant-ed, such as the reference desk, wereunknown in antiquity. Public services,also called user services or reader servic-es, constitute an important componentof any modern library’s activities. Publicservices librarians assist users in locatingand evaluating information, provideresearch consultation (in-depth or spe-cialized assistance), and conduct librarytours and classes on the use of libraryresources. Along with subject specialistsand catalogers, public services librariansconstitute most of the professional staffin an academic or research library. Somelibrarians work exclusively in one ofthese three capacities. More common,however, is a mix of duties. At NYU, forexample, most subject specialists alsohave public service responsibilities. Inan average week, I spend six hours atthe reference desk, a couple of hoursinstructing individuals or classes in theuse of the library, and another couple ofhours consulting with people abouttheir research via e-mail, on the tele-phone, or in my office. The rest of myweek is devoted to committee work,special projects, and my subject special-ist duties.

Answering reference questions per-haps best illustrates how useful my clas-sical education has been. Here is a smallsample of the questions dealing withclassics that I have fielded over the pastfew years: What is Aeschylus’ attitudetoward women in the Oresteia? How didthe Romans make bread? What depic-tions of Aphrodite survive in ancientart? What stylized gestures did ancientorators use? What recent scholarship isthere on Plato’s Symposium? Some ofthese questions were asked when I wasworking at the reference desk; otherscame via e-mail or a phone call to myoffice. Not all were from students takingclassics courses. Indeed, interestingclassics questions are often asked bypeople from other disciplines. A doctor-

al student in modern European historyonce asked me to vet his translation ofignoramus et ignorabimus (“we do not andshall not know”), the slogan of the nine-teenth-century skeptic Emil Du Bois-Reymond. Sometimes questions comeeven from other librarians. Once a col-league cataloging a book in Latin askedme what he should enter as its place ofpublication. The title page said “Beroli-ni.” Not recognizing the locative caseform of Berlin, he assumed he was deal-ing with an Italian place name, which,of course, he could not verify. To besure, I am not asked questions such asthese on a daily basis, but they do arisefrequently enough to help keep mywork interesting and pleasantly chal-lenging.

Library instruction provides anotheropportunity to use my classical back-ground. Students taking a classicscourse sometimes need an overview ofthe research strategies and referencesources relevant to an assignment. Atthe instructor’s request, I design andconduct a library session tailored to thespecific requirements of the course.Recently I have provided libraryinstruction for undergraduate courses inclassical mythology, Greek tragedy,Vergil, and Graeco-Roman art. Introduc-ing students to reference tools that willopen up new worlds to them is particu-larly rewarding.

My institution’s special collectionsdepartment has also given me interest-ing opportunities to apply my training inclassics. Precious materials such as rarebooks, manuscripts, and archivesrequire special care and security. Inmost academic libraries, a departmentexists specifically for this purpose and isusually called special collections. Foryears, NYU’s department had a largenumber of uncataloged books in Greekand Latin, printed mostly in the six-teenth and seventeenth centuries. Noone had the time or knew the ancientlanguages well enough to determinewhat these books were about andwhether they should be kept or sold.Shortly after I began working at NYU,the head of special collections asked meto review them and decide their fate.Because many turned out to be land-mark editions of the classics (includingan Aldine Ovid and Lambinus’

FROM SCROLL TO DATABASE: WHAT DO CLASSICS LIBRARIANS DO?by W. Gerald Heverly

16


Lucretius), the project proved especial-ly satisfying.

My position also constantly chal-lenges me to learn more about classics.In order to make sure that I order all theimportant books coming out, I routinelyread reviews of titles published aboutthe classical world. In this way, I learnabout new developments in scholarshipand more. Recently, for instance, a bookreview made me aware of AchillesTatius, a Greek novelist of the secondcentury A.D. I frequently consult theOxford Classical Dictionary and other ref-erence works when deciding whether tobuy books on specialized topics. Forexample, when I was trying to deter-mine whether to order a book entitledLa Peucezia in età romana (Peucezia in theRoman Era), I learned from an Italianencyclopedia that the Peucetii lived insoutheastern Italy, came in contact withthe Romans in 291 B.C., and remainedpeaceful during the Social War. Similar-ly, I knew little about papyrology untilthree years ago, when NYU began par-ticipating in the Advanced Papyrologi-cal Information System (APIS). Fundedby the National Endowment for theHumanities, APIS is a database thatcombines high quality images of papyriwith descriptive information about eachitem. Our special collections depart-ment houses a collection of papyri thatis being cataloged and scanned forAPIS. As coordinator of this project, Ihave studied handbooks of papyrologyin order to improve my knowledge ofthe field. I have also experienced thethrill of working directly with the papyriin our collection, including fragments ofHomer nearly two thousand years old(see Fig. 5).

Many librarians with a background inclassics use it in their jobs as routinelyas I use mine. The cataloging depart-ment at Yale handles a steady stream ofbooks in the classical languages. Antho-ny Oddo, who leads the department’sArts and Sciences Team, catalogs someof these items himself and frequentlydeciphers title pages in Greek or Latinfor other catalogers. Phoebe Peacock,classics specialist at the Library of Con-gress, uses her knowledge of classicswhen answering questions about theancient world at the reference desk. Offthe desk, her language skills are calledupon by members of Congress whorequest Latin to English or English toLatin translations. Some legislatorseven request references to classicalsources that bear on matters before theHouse or Senate (e.g., Cicero on theabuse of power). As a matter of policy,

however, Ms. Peacock is not told theidentity of Congressional inquirers.

Even at smaller libraries, it is possi-ble to use a classical education routine-ly. The head of special collections atTrinity College (Hartford), JeffreyKaimowitz, oversees his institution’snumerous early printed editions of theclassics. He has mounted severalexhibits at Trinity featuring thesebooks and uses them as a teachingresource when speaking to classes aboutsuch topics as the history of classicalscholarship, the transmission of texts,and Neo-Latin poetry. Building on hisroutine responsibilities, he has twicetaught a course on Renaissance print-ing, which includes a healthy classicscomponent, through Trinity’s continu-ing education program.

Karen Green, classics librarian atColumbia University, has also had anexciting opportunity to apply herknowledge of classics beyond her regu-lar duties. Two years ago, she was inEgypt’s Western Desert, setting up afield library near the Amheida excava-tion site. This reference collection,which will eventually include about athousand volumes, focuses on Graeco-Roman Egypt and is consulted by facul-ty and students working on the dig.

By now it should be clear that librari-anship offers an interesting and reward-ing career for someone who has studiedclassics. The study of Greek and Latincertainly hones analytical skills and

attention to detail, both of which areessential for library work. Furthermore,graduate study of classics fosters notonly in-depth knowledge of the ancientworld but also reading knowledge ofFrench, German, and Italian, languagesfor which there is a steady demand inresearch libraries. Anyone who can readthese languages, even with a dictionary,has a distinct advantage when applyingfor a job as a subject specialist, cata-loger, or curator of special collections.In addition, teaching experience gainedduring graduate school is good prepara-tion for work in public services. Assist-ing readers at the reference desk andinstructing groups or individuals in theuse of the library require the kinds ofcommunication skills sharpened byclassroom teaching.

A degree in classics will, however,normally not be enough to land a libraryjob. For most professional positions, anM.L.S. (Master of Library Science) isrequired in addition to any stipulatedsubject or language expertise. As theshortage of academic librarians grows,institutions may become more flexibleabout requiring the M.L.S. for certainentry-level positions. In any event, boththe Chronicle of Higher Education and theAssociation of College and ResearchLibraries (ACRL) report nervously thatacademic librarians are in short supply.Applicants proficient in ancient andmodern languages are especially sought.Thus, graduate students and other classi-cists contemplating alternative careers toteaching may find it worth their while toexplore librarianship. ACRL’s WesternEuropean Studies Section, to whichmany classics librarians belong, main-tains a Web site for anyone wishing tolearn about the kinds of library careersopen to people with foreign languageskills and subject expertise (http://www.columbia.edu/~klg19/WESS/index.html).

W. Gerald Heverly ([email protected]) has been an academic librarian foreighteen years, first at the University of Pitts-burgh (1988-2001) and now at NYU (since2002). He earned an M.A. in classics andan M.L.S. from the University of Pitts-burgh. This article grew out of a panel ses-sion on library careers that he organized forthe Spring 2004 meeting of the ClassicalAssociation of the Atlantic States. He thankshis fellow panelists for their encouragementand valuable comments on a draft of thearticle.

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Fig. 5. Papyrus fragment (NYU Inv. 524)of Homer, Iliad 3.188-99, from Karanis,early first century A.D. Photo credit: FalesLibrary, New York University.


Roth’s textual strategy certainly deep-ens the pathos of the work, and the trag-ic intertexts reinforce the loss and suf-fering that permeate the novel andengulf its characters. Silk suffers at thehands of elitist colleagues but is himselfcapable of self-service and cruelty. Hisdecision to abandon his family takes aterrible toll on his mother and siblings,and his uncompromising rage is a con-tributing factor to the death of his wife.Other characters, brutalized by theworld, lead lives of unredeemed unhap-piness: Faunia Farley suffers the tragicloss of her children; her ex-husband, aVietnam veteran, suffers from traumaticstress. The novel’s tragic ambiance iscaptured at Silk’s eulogy and funeral, ashis children assemble to mourn his pass-ing and Mark sings the Kaddish, recall-ing the shared sense of family loss afterthe passing of Oedipus in Oedipus atColonus. Yet the novel ends with a ges-ture toward the power of art to establishtruth and liberate readers from igno-rance and hypocrisy. Just as Oedipus atColonus works to restore Oedipus to hisformer greatness, the novel that Zucker-man vows to undertake (which is TheHuman Stain) seeks to rehabilitate thedamaged reputation of its protagonist.

Thomas Falkner (tfalkner@ mcdaniel.edu)is Provost and Dean of the Faculty, andProfessor of Classics, at McDaniel College inMaryland. He co-organized the panel“Classics and Contemporary Fiction” at the2006 meeting of the APA. “Novel Approach-es to the Classics,” Parts I and II, can befound in Amphora’s online archive atwww.apaclassics.org (issues 2.1 and 3.1).

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NOVEL APPROACHESTO THE CLASSICS:PART IIIcontinued from page 5 With this issue, Amphora is entering

its fifth year of publication. Wehave grown from eight pages to twenty(and will expand to twenty-four with issue5.2). We now have readers around theworld. Our Editorial Board has seen somerecent changes: we thank departing mem-bers Marty Abbott and Matthew Santiroccofor the service they provided to Amphoraduring their terms. We welcome to the Edi-torial Board Sally R. Davis, Elaine Fantham,and Chris Ann Matteo. We also welcomeT. Davina McClain, our new AssistantEditor.

We feel very privileged at Amphora tobe part of the steady and growing interestin all aspects of classical studies. Notableevidence for this lively interest can be foundnot only in Hollywood films but also in the quantity and variety of series beingpublished by major presses:

Blackwell Publishinghttp://www.blackwellpublishing.com/serieslist.asp?subj=RD&site=1) publishesseveral ongoing series: Introductions to theClassical World, Guides to Classical Litera-ture, Companions to the Ancient World,and Sourcebooks in Ancient History.

Cambridge University Press(http://www.cambridge.org) has beenpublishing and continues to publish vol-umes of essays in its Cambridge Compan-ions series (volumes on Aristotle,Herodotus, Homer, Plato, ancient Greeklaw, early Greek philosophy, the Hellenisticworld, Greek and Roman philosophy,Greek tragedy, Augustine, Ovid, Vergil,the age of Augustus, the age of Constan-tine, the age of Justinian, the Roman Repub-lic, Roman satire, and the Stoics are inprint).

Duckworth (http://www.ducknet.co.uk)publishes several series. Ancients in Actionintroduces major figures of the ancientworld (volumes on Catullus, Cleopatra, andSpartacus have already been published).Classical Inter/Faces concentrates on howclassical ideas have helped to shape the

modern world (due out in fall 2006, forexample, are Celebrity in Antiquity: FromMedia Tarts to Tabloid Queens and Romeand the Literature of Gardens).

Oxford University Press (http://www.oup.co.uk) publishes several series includ-ing Oxford Classical Texts, ClarendonAncient History Series, Greece and Rome –New Surveys in the Classics, OxfordApproaches to Classical Literature, OxfordReadings in Classical Studies, and OxfordWorld’s Classics (ancient texts in translation).

Random House (http://www.random-house.ca/features/themyths/note.html) hasrecently launched a new series entitled TheMyths; three titles have been publishedalready: A Short History of Myth, Weight(the story of Atlas and Heracles) and ThePenelopiad (reviewed by Matthew Clark inthis issue). The release of these three bookswill be followed each year by freshretellings of the myths by other contempo-rary authors.

Routledge (http://www.routledge-ny.com) has a new series entitled Godsand Heroes of the Ancient World (volumeson Zeus and Prometheus have alreadybeen published, and new volumes on Oedi-pus, Heracles, Athena, Medea, Apollo,and Dionysus are due out in the summerand fall of 2006). Another series entitledWomen of Antiquity will contain volumes tobe published in 2006 on Neaera,Olympias, Cornelia, Julia Domna, and Julia Augusti (by Amphora’s own ElaineFantham).

A summer (and autumn) of good readinglies ahead!

From the Editorby Anne-Marie Lewis


The Department of Humanitiesand Classics at Ohio WesleyanUniversity decided with great

student and faculty enthusiasm tospend the night, the entire night, with apoetic sorcerer. On Friday, March 24,2006, at 9:00 p.m., deep in the bowels ofSturges Hall (see Fig. 6), we began ourthird annual marathon reading of a greatancient poetic text – this year theAeneid, part in Latin, most in English.The reading extended from the firstword Arma (weapons of destruction) tothe last, umbras (ghosts). It continuedthrough dawn and deep into Saturdaymorning. In the beginning, many stu-dents of Latin, Greek, folklore, Latinliterature in translation, and friendsfrom our Humanities program hushedin expectation as we launched the long(trust us!) epic on the high seas ofsilence. Soon we entered the poeticstorm, but many stayed on board untilmidnight. After some fell asleep (not atthe helm, though), the faithful band ofclassicists and straggling friends wasreduced to eight students and two facul-ty members by the time the last Italianwarrior was killed.

Brad Cook (now at San Diego StateUniversity) organized the successful2004 reading of Homer’s Odyssey. At thatevent, students and faculty read fromtwenty-four different Homeric transla-tions. Donald Lateiner directed the2005 reading of Ovid’s Metamorphoses.On that occasion, about sixty students

selected for readings their favorite sto-ries and incidents from Ovid’s variedand violent tales. The new UniversityPresident, Mark Huddleston, joined ourpoetic frenzy. Professor Lee Fratan-tuono marshaled the caparisoned Ohiohosts for this year’s reading of Virgil’sepic masterpiece. Most participantsused Allen Mandelbaum’s translation,but a few read from Robert Fitzgerald’sor from other twentieth-century transla-tions, and Professor Richard Elias readmany of John Dryden’s finely tunedcouplets.

This year’s “Virgil Vigil” would havebeen candlelit, but university regula-tions forbade this pyrotechnic realism.Nevertheless, epic love, epic death,epic defeat, and epic glory rang throughthe halls of Ohio Wesleyan, whileguests and rhapsodes munched ondates, figs, dolmadhes, olives, and (yes)pretzels and potato chips. Drink includ-ed Virgil’s Microbrewed Root Beer.

The devoted and the merely curiouscame, saw, and heard how Aeneas fledfrom Troy after the lethal trick of thewooden horse. They heard and read ofthe monstrous Harpies, the voraciousCyclops, betrayed Dido, the mysteriesof the underworld and tortured and hap-pier lives after death, bold and beautifulCamilla, optimistic Pallas, and justifiablyfurious Turnus. Energetic studentseven acted out certain moments of thedrama, such as Anchises’ assisted exitfrom the burning city of Troy.

Very tentative plans have alreadybeen made for the spring 2007 OhioWesleyan classical night watch. Someideas that have circulated among thestalwart Virgilians of 2006 include, onthe Latin side, Lucan’s Pharsalia,Horace’s complete poetry, andLucretius. On the Greek side, the likelychoice is Homer’s Iliad – if the currentalternation of Greek and Roman worksis sustained. Another possibility that wehave explored is having an outdoor,daylight, afternoon recitation of some-thing that will draw greater attention tothe central significance of classics oncampus – and not require the lengthyovernight commitment.

Basking in Virgil’s vision of the birthof ancient Rome was an experience ofjoy and bone-crushing fatigue. Virgilseems a different spirit at midnight, at 4 a.m., at the gray dawn, and at 8 a.m.Try it yourself, if you mayhap think oth-erwise! By the end of the Vigil’s martialMarch evening – more accurately, thebeginning of the morning – the studentsstill extant if not standing, along withtheir two groggy (somniculosi) facultymembers, were ready for nothing butsleep. They were left on the shores oflight with a sweeping view of Virgil’sepic masterpiece and the memory of theadvice of Aeneas, which they had heardaround 9:45 p.m., when they were stillfresh and alert – forsan et haec olim memi-nisse iuvabit (Aeneid 1.203), “perhaps, oneday, it will be pleasing to remembereven these things.”

Donald Lateiner ([email protected]) andLee Fratantuono ([email protected])teach in the Department of Humanities andClassics at Ohio Wesleyan University inDelaware, Ohio.

(ISSN 1542-2380) is published twice a year by the American Philological Association (APA). TheAPA, founded in 1869 by “professors, friends, and patrons of linguistic science,” is now the princi-pal learned society in North America for the study of ancient Greek and Roman languages, litera-

tures, and civilizations. While the majority of its members are university and college classics teachers, members alsoinclude scholars in other disciplines, primary and secondary school teachers, and interested lay people. The APA pro-duces several series of scholarly books and texts and the journal Transactions of the American Philological Association. Itholds an annual meeting each January in conjunction with the Archaeological Institute of America.

All of the APA’s programs are grounded in the rigor and high standards of traditional philology, with the study ofancient Greek and Latin at their core. However, the APA also aims to present a broad view of classical culture and theancient Mediterranean world to a wide audience. In short, the APA seeks to preserve and transmit the wisdom andvalues of classical culture and to find new meanings appropriate to the complex and uncertain world of the twenty-firstcentury.

The APA’s activities serve one or more of these overarching goals:• To ensure an adequate number of well-trained, inspirational classics teachers at all levels, kindergarten

through graduate school;• To give classics scholars and teachers the tools they need to preserve and extend their knowledge of

classical civilization and to communicate that knowledge as widely as possible;• To develop the necessary infrastructure to achieve these goals and to make the APA a model for other

societies confronting similar challenges.The APA welcomes everyone who shares this vision to participate in and support its programs. All APA members

receive Amphora automatically as a benefit of membership. Non-members who wish to subscribe to Amphora(U. S. $5/issue in the U. S. and Canada; U. S. $7.50/issue elsewhere) or who wish further information about the APAmay write to The American Philological Association, 292 Logan Hall, University of Pennsylvania, 249 S. 36th Street,Philadelphia, PA 19104-6304, [email protected]. The APA Web site is www.apaclassics.org.

Members attending meetings of or making presentations to interested non-members are urged to request samplecopies of Amphora from the APA office for distribution to these audiences.

®

THE OHIO WESLEYAN “VIRGIL VIGIL” by Donald Lateiner and Lee Fratantuono

Fig. 6. Sturges Hall at Ohio WesleyanUniversity. Photo courtesy of OhioWesleyan University.

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A Publication of theAmerican Philological

Association

Editor

Anne-Marie LewisYork [email protected]

Assistant Editor

T. Davina McClainLouisiana Scholars’ College

Northwestern State [email protected]

Editorial Board

Adam BlisteinExecutive Director, APA

[email protected]

Sally DavisArlington County (Virginia) Public

Schools [email protected]

Elaine FanthamPrinceton [email protected]

Helene Foley Barnard College [email protected]

Mary-Kay GamelUniversity of California-Santa Cruz

[email protected]

Barbara GoldHamilton [email protected]

Judith P. Hallett University of Maryland, College Park

[email protected]

Ann Olga Koloski-Ostrow Brandeis University

[email protected]

Chris Ann MatteoThe Edmund Burke School

[email protected]

Daniel [email protected]

Andrew Szegedy-Maszak Wesleyan University

[email protected]

Susan Ford WiltshireVanderbilt University

[email protected]

Sponsorship: Amphora, a publicationsponsored by the Committee on Out-reach of the American PhilologicalAssociation, is published twice a year,in the spring and fall.

Audience: Amphora is intended for a wide audience that includes thosewith a strong enthusiasm for theclassical world: teachers and students,present and former classics majors,administrators in the field of education,community leaders, professionalclassicists, and interested academicsand professionals in other fields.

Submissions: Amphora welcomes sub-missions from professional scholars andexperts on topics dealing with theworlds of ancient Greece and Rome(literature, language, mythology, history,culture, classical tradition, and the arts).Submissions should not only reflectsound scholarship but also have wideappeal to Amphora’s diverse outreachaudience. Contributors should be will-ing to work with the editor to arrive at amutually acceptable final manuscriptthat is appropriate to the intendedaudience and reflects the intention ofAmphora to convey the excitement ofclassical studies.

Suggested Length of Submissions:Articles (1500-1800 words), reviews(800-1000 words).

Anonymous Refereeing: Submissionswill be refereed anonymously.

Footnotes: Amphora is footnote free.Any pertinent references should beworked into the text of the submission.

Addresses for Submissions:Submissions (and enquiries) may besent either by mail to the postal addressbelow or electronically to the e-mailaddress below:

Professor Anne-Marie LewisEditor, AmphoraDepartment of Languages, Literatures,and LinguisticsRoss Building S 561York UniversityToronto, ON M3J 1P3 [email protected]

American Philological Association292 Logan Hall, University of Pennsylvania249 S. 36th StreetPhiladelphia, PA 19104-6304E-mail: [email protected] site: www.apaclassics.org

Copyright © 2006 by the American Philological Association

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